BLOG.SAIDNDONE.COM

SEO Tip: How to Get 1,200 Sticky Headlines

Dana — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 00:50:13 GMT

Well, that headline probably got some attention.

Brainstorming is a way to generate ideas in business and personal
life. It's also a way to come up with ideas for articles, speeches,
presentations, and blog post titles or headlines.

Part of website and blog optimization is finding ways of attracting
visitors. Catchy headlines are catchy - what website optimization and
SEO analysts call "sticky." They get visitors to stay on a page and
click to read more.

What's the best way to brainstorm sticky headlines?

I listened to an Internet presentation by blog expert Nina East today.
One of the best pieces of information I got from the presentation was
a website that generates up to 1,200 headlines or ideas for articles
and blog posts.

I went right to the site and started experimenting. Fill in some or
all boxes and see what happens. You will be amazed.

The website is http://www.rackandwrite.com.

Let us know your favorite result!

SEO and Beyond Tip: Poetry in Motion for Businesses - Keywords

Dana — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:03:21 GMT

Driving out of Chicago, from one family minireunion to another family
reunion in Michigan, I saw a commercial van with writing on the side.
That in itself is not unusual. They all have advertising copy of some
kind as well as contact information. This writing stood out because it
was a list of words that described what the business product created
for customers and looked like keywords or tags for a blog post. It was
a sentence that started with "We provide..." followed by the effects
or keywords/tags and the actual product at the end. My older daughter,
who has a keen eye for detail as a graphic designer and experienced
photographer, pointed out two hours later when proofreading this post
that the words 'natural gas' were larger font size and green. She
commented that it looked like the tag selection section on Flickr, the
photo sharing site.

The phrase looked a bit like a poem by ee cummings. This whole word
scene definitely attracted my attention. What a great way that is to
describe a business! In addition, analyzing the side of this an
provides a way to generate keywords and categories to boost the rank
of your website or blog.

So - quickly - list what your business provides first - the actual
product or service. For mine, that would be communications services
and products or "websites ~ writing ~ social media consulting ~
graphic design."

Now list what the effects are for your customers and even the effects
you'd like to have in the future. For my business that would be: solid
brand identity, good impressions, looking good, sounding great,
attracting customers, improved internal communication, advertising
makeover, standing out among the competition, standing out in the
crowd, put voice to your dreams, multiply your connections, save
money, better business through beautification, self-expression,
stories told, grammar and spelling tune-up, making sure what happens
in your business doesn't just stay in your business.

Then you will have a poetic line that expresses the customer benefits
realized by shopping with your business or organization. This sentence
will also contain keywords and tags for blog posts and the copywriting
on your website, which are all important for SEO. Identifying and
using keywords in the writing on your website and in the metatags is
important also for helping search engine crawlers and people find your
website within categories of concepts typed into an Internet search
field.

Now for the information you were probably waiting to read - what did
that van have written on the side?

I didn't have time to write it all down but here is the gist of it:

We provide warm winter nights, peace of mind, comfort, coziness, clean
air, relief for your budget, overdraftiness protection, natural gas."

The company is Peoples Gas and their website is below. By the way, it
looks like they are using a Content Management System for their
website similar to the kind that SAID & DONE provides. They have a
Login area, which is the main clue. Good for them!

http://www.peoplesgasdelivery.com/default.aspx

After you finish your poetry phrase, type each keyword or keyphrase
into your Internet search window one at a time, and see what pops up.
You can add the word 'blog' next and see what blogs relate to the
concept. Maybe some of them are sites or communities where it would
make sense to post a comment with a link to your website or blog and
increase the number of links to your sites.

Post a comment here and share anything you learned from this post and
the exercise of listing tag and keyword poetry for your business for
SEO! I think the exercise is good for business planning as well.

SEO Tips: Ben Franklin and the Power of 13

Dana — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:04:00 GMT

Benjamin Franklin was an interesting guy or a weird dude, depending on your knowledge of his life. He was definitely marching to the beat of a different drummer. One good thing he did was to write a book of virtues - 13, to be exact.

I believe that visiting his short summary of the 13 virtues can lead to a better lived life, a better run business, and can even help elevate your website rank.

Here are the 8 that deal with personal traits:

    Temperance: Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

    Order: Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

    Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

    Frugality: Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.

    Moderation: Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

    Industry: Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

    Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

    Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

How do they apply to website development and search engine ranking?

Temperance - if you are not taking care of yourself, you won't be able to take care of business.

Order - self explanatory; read the post about how website readers for the visually impaired will go in a certain order - and there is plenty written about having a site structure that makes sense - which often starts with a plan.

Resolution - have a plan for how to optimize your website and execute your plan.

Frugality - no excessive text - don't waste space - no fifty mile long pages and unnecessary links to additional pages that don't say enough.

Moderation - stay calm - it helps in all aspects of life and business.

Industry - make time for your website optimization - cut out the fat of activity in your life - do you need to be on Twitter 5 hours a day - well, maybe some of you do...

Cleanliness - keeping everything clean is so much more healthy...even a website that sells online gambling could at least have links to where to seek help for a gambling addiction!

Tranquility - don't sweat the small stuff, consider that mistakes others make may have good reasons, and strive to be friendly in your attitude toward everything you do, including while updating that website.

Perhaps the goodwill that we exude spills over into our websites and people can feel it. If they can feel the love, they will want to visit your business virtually and physically.

And there were 5 dealing with social life which affects business success:

    Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

    Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

    Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

    Chastity: Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

    Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I would add to the last one - venerate and imitate someone who inspires you - Buddha and others are included.

SEO Tip: Hell, Spoons, Heaven, and Accessibility

Dana — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 05:05:42 GMT

Web crawlers are software critters that search engines such as Google send to observe websites and rank them.

How does a web crawler access your site? As mentioned in the post on images and Alt text to accompany the images, the software that crawls a site can't see images. There are a lot of other things that crawlers can't process.

An analogy between web crawlers and persons with different types limitations would be very accurate.

There are some people who view websites, by choice or due to technology limitations, with browsers that don't allow viewing of
images or video or listening to audio files. Web crawlers experience a site similarly. There are some people who have visual or auditory impairments and can't view images easily and can't hear audio files easily. Still others can only grasp website content through software that reads its content aloud. Such readers will read the Alt text - like a background caption - associated with each picture so the person knows what is there. The software that reads aloud will go through a Web page in a specific order, and a good website developer will make sure that the pages are organized toward that order.

Go here to view your website much as a crawler and a person with technology limitations will see it - through the browser called Lynx mentioned in the post cited later from A List Apart:

http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html

Many websites have images for navigation buttons - for example, a site map of images hyperlinked to pages or a single image of a looking glass to stand for "search." Someone looking at the website through a plain browser will not see the images. A search engine crawler will also not be able to "see" the images - unless each has redundant text beside it with an additional hyperlink, which is good accessibility.

If you have an iPhone, you have experienced a lack of access to certain website content: you can't view Adobe Flash files. Wouldn't it
be nice to see some kind of alternative description at least? While out shopping last week, I was trying to find information about a very good local restaurant on my iPhone. Unfortunately, the hours and address were in a Flash file that I could not see, and the information was not displayed anywhere else on their website. I made a note to myself: potential client for website makeover. Then I found their information on Urban Spoon. It was an extra step that was a bit annoying.

The idea is not to quit or avoid using images and multimedia on websites, but to find ways to convey the content they provide to
people who can't experience them as most people can. By doing so, the website will be ranked coincidentally more favorably.

A great article on the overlap between SEO and making a website accessible to viewers with constraints is here:

http://m.alistapart.com/articles/accessibilityseo/

And here is an article from the mysterious people in charge of The World Wide Web about making websites accessible to those with
disabilities - focus on the Introduction.

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

The Introduction has a good bullet point summary of main ideas about differences among persons accessing websites.

One important point is that some people do not have or are unable to use a mouse or keyboard. We may question whether a person without a mouse or keyboard would be likely to purchase something from a website or become active with a non-profit. I am sure there are some good stories out there about people with limitations who found a way on the right websites to buy or do what they wanted.

Accessibility has been increasingly important in the United States - witness the Americans with Disabilities Act, rules about handicapped parking spots and elevator dimensions and more. When I trained as an election official a few years ago, I was fascinated by the voting booths that have accessibility modifications. Maybe you have noticed these when voting - maybe some of you have used one due to a disability. It is good that such things exist.

Today, more than ever, it is essential to make sure your website is accessible. We have a graying population with a growing number persons whose visual and auditory acuity diminishes - and arthritis can make it tough to do mouse motions and keyboarding. We also have a large number of soldiers who have returned from active duty with disabilities, and a significant portion of these individuals can benefit from websites that are designed for the highest standards of accessibility.

As in all things, consideration and inclusiveness are best practices for being a good person, getting into heaven, and building a popular business. Remember the story about the difference between heaven and hell? In both places, people sat across from each other along a narrow banquet table with bowls of soup and very long handled spoons. In hell, no one ate. In heaven, however, each person fed the person on the opposite side of the table.

Accessibility revision to a website is one important thing we can do to help others and at the same time help ourselves.

What will be the first item you put on your long-handled spoon?

SEO Tip: Twitter Feed on Your Website

Dana — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 23:24:59 GMT

As mentioned earlier this month, links to your website of blog are one
of the best ways to boost your website rank.

I know many small business owners who hesitate to delve into having a
Facebook Page, Twitter for the business, blog, YouTube - you name it.
Some worry about privacy. If such social media sites are for your
business and in the name of your business, there should be the
opposite attitude - promoting your business, the opposite of privacy.

So, stop hesitating and go get set up with at least a page and a
Twitter. Once set up with Twitter, link back to your website by
putting the URL on your Twitter info area. Then get - or have your
webmaster or web goddess do this - the widget from Twitter that will
display Tweets on your Twitter home page in real time. People who
click to your website will click to Twitter and may "follow" your
business there. If they don't want to follow yet, or don't have a
Twitter, they will at least be able to see two "channels" in one place.

Get the widget here and see what it looks like:

http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets

SEO Tip: Images

Dana — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 05:10:22 GMT

Some experts say to limit the amount of images on your website to what
would bring and keep visitors. Obviously, product catalog sales images
are important for certain businesses. But keep in mind that search
engines can't read images. So plain images don't do anything for or
against your rank. But if you have Alt text associated with each image
that may help your rank because search engines can read that text.

Also, having Alt text linked to each image is user friendly for a
small class of Internet users who use a text-only browser.

Ask your Web guru to make sure to write brief text descriptions in
each image's properties. The Alt text field should not, by the way, be
a place to stuff endless repetitive keywords. That is viewed as spammy
and will count against your site in ranking.

SEO Tip: Uniqueness and Conversations

Dana — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:09:28 GMT

How do you find the best online places to engage in conversations where you
can leave a link to your helpful website and blog? How do you plan for
unique content?

One of the best articles I have seen about both these concepts is on
Problogger. The title as well as the content are instructive.

"How To Build 22,938 Links To Your Blog"

Who wouldn't want to read a blog post with such a title?! Go to
http://www.problogger.net and enter that title into the search window.

Ideas include an example of choosing a specialized and interesting niche for
the topic of the blog and information about how to promote a blog.

Once you have narrowed down a niche, because that is part of trying to
provide unique content, the writer advises identifying the top 10 blogs
related to the niche. Once those blogs are identified, start visiting and
leaving helpful comments.

How do you find top 10 blogs related to your niche? You can search on
Google, Bing, or other search engines. You can do a Twitter search for #
followed by the key words you are seeking. You can sign up for Google Alerts
on the topic of your niche - see http://www.google.com/alerts. Type in your
"Search terms" and select "Blogs" under type of item, choose how many alerts
you'd like to receive per email and how often, and whether you'd like to
receive these by email or by "Feed." You can click to the right on "Preview
results" to see what items are available.

Go to Technorati.com and click on their Top 100 Blogs report - it is updated
daily. You also can click to the listing of blogs by category. Poke around
and see what looks reputable and well rated (higher authority number).

From your various searches, choose one or two of the higher ranked blogs in
your general area of expertise, and set a goal of leaving a comment on each
blog once a week. Choose a few more that relate to an area that you sell to
or partner with for your business. For example, if you are a pet resort
business, you may want to look for a blog that relates to animal well being,
vacations and cruises, home based mommy businesses...brainstorm a list and
try reading a few a day quickly and decide what is worth regular reading and
commenting.

Always leave your blog website URL in the body of your comment - many of the
blogs will leave a place for you to type your website or blog URL but what
you type in that box will not be automatically included when your comment is
approved. Once you have managed to have multiple blog posts on your own
blog, you can leave a more specific URL to a specific article that relates
to the content on which you are commenting. And as you will see in the
Problogger article cited, it is a great idea to get links to internal pages
of your website or blog, not just to the main page with the recent posts.

Twitter and the conversations there are important components of your SEO
strategy. I advise clients to have at least three social media accounts: a
Facebook Page, a blog, and a Twitter, preferably with the same name as your
business or as close as possible. I was able to get saidndone.com for my
business website and saidndone for our Twitter account. If you have the same
name everywhere, and you start doing regular Tweets, people who first find
you through this avenue will have an easier time finding your website or
blog. In any case, make sure to put your blog or website URL on the Twitter
information area. That is a link from one of your sites to another one of
your sites, and that is good for visibility.

You never can tell where Twitter conversations will lead. My son is
interested in the entertainment industry, with talents ranging from DJ work
to acting to planning student TV shows at college. He is a heavy Twitter
user, which happened after a film professor required her students to have a
Twitter account as part of the communications and learning process. While we
were in Florida as a family in June, he happened upon an opportunity to
exchange Tweets with the Queen of Jordan. It was a lot of fun for us all to
see this happening, and perhaps that conversation, or just his ability to
look for those opportunities and engage, will help him in making connections
someday.

And while we are talking about cross-referencing - do you have a link to
your blog on your website? It should be easy to find. See an example at
http://www.saidndone.com - we provide links to the blog as well as the
Facebook and Twitter landing pages.

SEO Tip: Be the Life of the Party

Dana — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:13:36 GMT

Attention and mention are keys to optimizing the visibility of your website.

How do you get attention and mention?

Your content needs to be as unique and helpful as possible. Many people
think that keywords are king. Having the right keywords present in your
website content is important. But keywords should not cover the entire chess
board. Some prospective clients have asked SAID & DONE to rewrite their
website content with many mentions of their company focus. However, this
strategy as a way to boost rank is a myth. Too many mentions of a keyword,
and the software that crawls through your website will downgrade the ranking
of your website. That does make sense. If you were at a networking event and
a business person came up to you and talked about what they do by repeating
their main business function twenty times, would you be thrilled? No, you
would be asleep or moving on quickly. You would downgrade your assessment of
that person and probably of their business as well.

Think about who you enjoy being with at networking and other events. The
phrase "life of the party" should pop into your head about now. You want to
be the life of the online party. Be fun, be memorable, be helpful, be
respectful...be all the things you learned in kindergarten, from your
grandmother, and from your best teachers in life.

Be concise, to the point, not repetitive, and work on updating your content
regularly to provide relevant and helpful information. Then participate in
online discussions on different sites where you can leave a link back to
your website. If you make helpful and meaningful comments on blogs, people
will click back to your site, and if the content there is entertaining and
helpful, your website will get mentions.

It takes time, consistency, and relevance. It takes the "R" motto words of
good education: Relationship, Rigor, Relevance, all built on Respect for
those with whom you are attempting to interact.

How do you find the best online places to engage in conversations where you
can leave a link to your helpful website and blog? How do you plan for
unique content? Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode on SEO.

SEO Tip of the Day for July: Expectations and Basics

Dana — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 22:52:39 GMT

If you are still in the planning stages of setting up a website, you have
time to consider the name or topic of your website. The choice of website
name can impact your website's visibility. Whether you are still planning or
already have a website, realize that boosting your website ranking is much
more difficult for some topics than for others.

For example, if you Google the term "interior design" you will find more
than 72 million results on the Google search index that results. If you
Google "Feng Shui" you will find about 12 million results - a sixth of the
previous term. Google "Feng Shui LEED" to find listings for this design
approach combined with environmental certification, and 23,000 results are
indexed. A business specializing in Feng Shui green design will have less
difficulty boosting its ranking among that topic listing than an interior
design business that does not focus on such a specialized topic.

Here is a link to a fantastic guide on Search Engine marketing basics. It is
very well written - concise and with useful graphics and analogies. For
example, the writer compares the World Wide Web to a "network of stops in a
big city subway system."

http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

If you'd rather get an even shorter version, we will try to put it here.

Happy optimizing!

SEO: Google Webmaster Tools for Free

Dana — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:17:00 GMT

One way to optimize your website for search engines is to sign up with Google Webmaster.

The main page is at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

This offers a free set of tools that helps increase traffic to your site - visibility.

It's simple to get started. You sign up for a Google Webmaster account and list your websites. You can list up to 1,000 websites - which won't apply to most people. But even a small business might have two websites - a website and a blog that is separate.

Many articles are available on the Google Webmaster blog that can give you great knowledge about how to increase the visibility of your website.

If you have a webmaster, you can ask if he or she is signed up for Google Webmaster and plan to get briefings on how your webmaster has set up your website to increase traffic.

A main concept for visibility is getting your URLs (main or other pages of your website shown as links) listed on other websites. You must grasp that, as with any networking activity, it takes time and genuine helpfulness to develop a reputation that builds mentions. There are some short term workarounds, but they are not recommended.

How to Get Your Website Higher on the Search Results Page of Google - July Daily Summaries Here

Dana — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:17:00 GMT

There are books written about this topic - how to rank higher in search engines such as Google. And there as many myths as truths about this subject, and companies that claim to guarantee that you will be on Page 1 after hiring them to help you. (Don't believe it.)

But we all know that it's good to be higher up, and page 1 would be a nice place to land after people do a search for a business such as yours. There are so many businesses out there - how do you make yours stand out in an Internet search from among the many lilies of the field - or of the pond, for that matter?

For the bookworm types out there who are fairly computer and Internet savvy, you can read a detailed book on SEO, Search Engine Optimization, by Kristopher B. Jones. You can also do a Google search on the topic of "SEO for small businesses" and see what YouTube videos and other articles pop up. Here is a link to a great video interview with a Google employee who is in charge of tweaking their search engine algorithms:

www.reachd.com/Blog.php/115/

If you don't have the time or patience to read a long SEO book, return to this blog daily in July. We will have a daily article about how to optimize your website for searches. You can also subscribe to receive updates about when our blog has a new post. Mini summaries will be on our Facebook Page (search for SAID & DONE Communications) and from our Twitter feed (@saidndone).

Happy optimizing!

Blogging for Professionals

Dana — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:33:00 GMT

SAID & DONE will be presenting a workshop at The Woodlands Chamber of Commerce under the sponsorship of Woodlands Media Solutions on April 29 from 9-11:30. It is our first workshop, and it is exciting.

The plan is to present a slide show about different ways to blog, with plenty of screenshots, and then do a hands-on assistance session in getting people set up with WordPress if that's what they want, and with brainstorming ideas for post categories.

What is a blog? That's a question we hear frequently. It is a journal on the Internet. It can be public or private. A friend of ours has a blog called My Online Repository through Blogger (via Google). His blog requires sign in permission to view. The purpose of his blog is to serve as a storage and display site about his life, memories, family photos, and lists of favorites and firsts, for his son to know more about him.

The word "blog" is a noun and a verb. You can start a blog, and you can participate in blogging, which is writing and posting to the online site on which you are blogging. Blogs can contain text, images, and videos.

There are many ways to blog. Twitter offers microblogging - 140 characters maximum, so just the headlines or main idea. People who have been uploading photos to Flickr can post detailed photo captions and descriptions, which is a kind of blogging. If you have a Facebook account, you can post your writings to the Notes application. If your business or non-profit has a Facebook Fan Page, which is a good marketing idea, you can also have a Notes page there where you post information about tips, trends, and other topics. Most major website hosting companies offer some kind of blogging platform of their own as well as supporting a WordPress add-on option. You could also just add a page to your business or non-profit website and call the Page "Blog" and post content there regularly, or ask your website person to upload the posts for you. And then there are many separate blogging platforms that you can choose from among, including Blogger and WordPress. Tons of videos are available on the Internet with a simple Google search for best practices on blogging and how to set up and maintain a blog.

The rule of thumb for blogging is to be consistent, especially if your goal is to market your services or products. Your content should be of a helpful or entertaining nature. Try to post once a week. Do that for a few months, and as you become more comfortable you can spend some time learning about the many details and options that you can do with your blog.

Sections of the workshop will be posted here soon!

Add a Very Cool and Completely FREE Image to Your Website's Address Bar!

Dana — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 17:24:00 GMT

You have probably noticed that these days many URLs will display a tiny image to the left of the URL in the website address bar. You can and MUST get one for your business or non-profit, and it is something you can do for no cost and that can be accomplished in just minutes to perhaps an hour at the most. The tiny image is called a favicon.

Below is a screen shot of one of my favorite local businesses, the Cy-Fair Federal Credit Union. They have a favicon based on their logo. The best image to use to create a favicon is a square image, or a square portion of your logo or business name first initial.

Here is a Before image of the SAID & DONE website earlier today, with no tiny image, to show you what website URLs look like with no favicon.

And here is the exciting After shot.

We will probably modify it to zoom in on the first initial (S) of our logo, but for now we zoomed in on the cool & sign behind the two words SAID & DONE. And we chose the animated version of the image, so it moves in the address bar when the reader clicks on each page of our website - which attracts attention.

To do this there are just a few steps. First, make sure you know where your logo file in jpeg or gif or png format is located. (If you want, make a copy of it and crop part of it to a square in the size of 64x64 pixels and save it with the word "favicon" in the file name.) Go to www.favicon.cc or www.html-kit.com/favicon/. Follow the instructions and browse to upload your favicon ready file. It will show you a preview in the URL area and/or below. Choose either the still or the animated version, or both, and save to your hard drive.

The last step is to upload it to your website. If you have a website person, send them the favicon file and ask them to add it to the address area. If you do your own website, contact your provider for instructions. With a go-daddy Website Tonight website, it is under Site Settings when you are managing your website.

If you would like SAID & DONE to help with any of the above steps, let us know at info@saidndone.com.

Have fun favicon-ing!

Money Saving Website Tips: How to Create a Quick and Easy Website for Free

Dana — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:56:38 GMT

SAID & DONE has gotten into the website design and development business in the past ten months, and it has been very exciting to learn what solutions are available to different size businesses and organizations.

The easiest and quickest website for "do-it-yourself" that we can suggest is a blog.

You might be thinking - What?! How can a blog be a website?

Well, a blog is just one kind of website, and blog platform providers offer dozens to hundreds of free templates with a great look and feel. Blogs are a kind of content management system in that the user is able to maintain their own content. It's almost as easy as typing an email. And you can update by email as well!

Many businesses have set up their actual websites on blog platforms such as Wordpress. College students today often are given access as authors on their professor's class blog as a way to upload assignments.

If your small business is somewhat of a hobby business and not a significant income stream, you can consider getting a free Wordpress blog website. The same advice applies to a small and perhaps temporary volunteer group. As such, your website will appear with the name of the blog platform. So, if you choose WordPress for your blog platform, 'wordpress' will be part of the domain name. Example - the forward thinking organization that snagged this name before it was taken by others: http://interiordesign.wordpress.com/.

For a small fee, you can purchase your own URL or domain name from the blog provider or from a hosting company. An example would be http://literacy.org/ or http://www.studiopress.com. And within the blog provider world there are plenty of links to professionals who can provide customized blog websites with your logo and special color schemes. Once that has been paid, you are literally free to go on and update on your own with no need to pay a service provider to do so. More about that in another post.

These are actual Fortune 500 company websites using WordPress:

http://wordpress.org/showcase/tag/fortune-500/

I'll be giving a hands-on workshop on Blogging for your Business at the South Montgomery County Woodlands Chamber of Commerce on April 27 from 9:00-11:30 a.m. This workshop will be explaining how to set up a blog as a blog (not as a website to provide company information and a store, etc.) and how to come up with ideas and a schedule for posts. This workshop would be great for non-profit organization representatives also. Both types of groups need to market their offerings.

So, if you'd like a hands-on lesson, sign up for the seminar, and if you'd like a personal lesson, contact us at info@saidndone.com. If your website needs a makeover, we can help. See an example at http://www.theaaef.org.

http://www.woodlandschamber.org/special_events_calendar.asp?action=view&id=4268

Back on the Blog

Dana — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:33:55 GMT

After a long absence from blogging, SAID & DONE is back on the blog.

Many events transpired to cause this absence - a parental diagnosis of
cancer and a high school transfer and subsequent early graduation were
the major ones.

Things have settled into a more stable mode. My dad is doing fairly well
after some scary hospitalizations and my older daughter settled in at
her new high school and graduated in the top 5% in December. So, life is
good.

I've done some schedule and logistics reorganizing to make sure there is
time to blog and meaningful entries to submit.

More to come soon!

Don't Be Possessed by Possessives: Use a Vertical Line to Separate the Parts

Dana — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:53:00 GMT

As part of SAID & DONE's interest in helping people communicate, we post this article about the apostrophe. You may have noticed that our blog posts now use a word and put a brief definition in parentheses ( ) after that word. This is because we know that many people whose native language is English need or want to improve their vocabulary knowledge. The other reason we are doing this is because we assume that some of the readers will be persons whose native language is not English and who are in need of vocabulary building, and others may have a learning disability such as dyslexia. We hope that these mini definitions will be helpful.

I get comments regularly about the problem of showing ownership in writing. Most people know that there is an apostrophe involved - and why do all these sentence and grammar body parts have to have such hard-to-spell names anyway? Apostrophe to me sounds like a religious term - similar to apostles and apostates.

For some funny musings on grammar and punctuation, visit the Oxford University Press blog. Here is a post on apostrophes: http://blog.oup.com/2008/07/apostrophes/.

According to the post above, the apostrophe invaded the English language in the 16th century, unluckily for us.

Other languages with which I am familiar (in order of the onset of my exposure in life: Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic) do not burden the speaker and writer with a pesky mark to show ownership - they simply add the word "of" or put the word for the owned item in front of the word for the owner. So in English to express the fact that the boy owns a hat you would say or write the phrase "boy's hat", in Arabic you would say "hat the boy," and in French or Spanish you would say "hat of the boy." I won't go into Polish because it is a more complex language similar to Latin in its use of confusing endings to words for different situations.

Back to the invasion by the apostrophe...it was first used to substitute for missing letters in common speech. It is still used this way in contractions: won't, don't, isn't, wouldn't, let's, would've (which many people think is 'would of' but it is really 'would have'). The apostrophe stands for a missing letter or letters. So to spell these correctly, just think of which letters would be there if you said both words in the contraction, and put the apostrophe where the deleted letters would be.

To handle possessives (ownership) simply write the word that is showing ownership without any apostrophes.

Let's say you are trying to communicate that the girl has a book.

You know that you will at least write 'girls.' Go ahead and write it.

Now examine the word and ask yourself how many girls there are - just one.

So draw a vertical (up and down) line in a place that breaks 'girls' into a word that shows one girl and the s on the other side: girl (your vertical line would go here) s.

Now erase the bottom part of the vertical line and just leave a small part at the top. That is your apostrophe. Now write the word showing what the girl owns to the right of girl's: girl's book. There you have it.

If more than one girl owns a book or books, write the word girls as you know that is going to be written to start with.

Where would you put your vertical line to show the number of girls being more than one?

Right. To the right of the word: girls (your vertical line here). Now erase the bottom part of the line: girls'.

Next post will deal with trickier possessive nouns (girl's and girls' are possessive nouns; possessive means owning or having something, from the root word possess (own) and nouns are words that name a person, place, or thing).

I think we should change some of the grammar and punctuation names to something that is easier to understand. Maybe the apostrophe should be called a handle, as if you own something you may hold onto it by a handle of some kind.

Homework: Practice Makes Perfect. Go write something to promote your business or cause and use two different possessive nouns - one that has one person/'place/thing owning something, and another that has more than one.

Singular example: Our store's anniversary is in August....

Plural example: The girls' night out that we are offering...

And please consider contacting SAID & DONE for help with your communications. We are now offering social media setup: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, blogs, etc., and we can still help you with copywriting for your email newsletters, brochures, and more. If you need a logo, we can help with that as well. Another upcoming service is installing easy to use websites that you can log into and update yourself with just a username and password in a window that looks like a Microsoft Word document. And we try to do all this at a very economical price. Email us at info@saidndone.com!

Happy Birthday USA - Thanks to Men and Women with Pens Who Knew How to Use Them

Dana — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:05:00 GMT

From The Library of Congress: Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson
Found at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Benjamin_Franklin_Joins_the_Revolution.html

On the birthday of the Declaration of Independence, I say we salute the founding fathers and mothers of the USA for their writing and vocabulary talents. The ability to express themselves convincingly in writing was responsible for inspiring thousands to be with them and against them. If it's true as experts say that a large precise vocabulary is the number one attribute of successful executives, these people exemplify this fact.

Let's just look at a few of these people.

John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are three men we can peruse (which means to study in detail) were the three men chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. The three men drafted the document between June 7 (my son's birthday), 1776, when the idea of separation was ratified (approved by vote) at the Continental Congress, and July 4, 1776, when the document was signed by the famous group of leaders.

John Adams was trained in law and spent much time before and after the Declaration of Independence writing newspaper editorials fomenting (inciting) separation from England.

Benjamin Franklin was 70 years old when he was invited to join the Continental Congress a year before the Declaration was signed. Public speaking did not come easily to him, but writing was a strength. He apparently sat mostly silent in the meetings for awhile, contemplating whether to completely support separation, and at last he did. His wisdom and writing capabilities were key to the document's development.

Thomas Jefferson also was trained in law and was an eloquent speaker as well as a prolific writer, making him the writer and editor in chief of the Declaration. This should make us all look into Toastmasters. Power executives must also be good public speakers. Jefferson was probably a genius with one of the top IQs of all time, expert in many subjects and a passionate advocate of universal free public education.

I think discussions between women and men shaped the founding documents of our country. During the Revolutionary War, John Adams exchanged letters with his brilliant wife Abigail, who was the home executive in charge of the family homestead while he was away. John Adams became our first ambassador to England, and again exchanged many letters with his wife, whom we can call a founding mother. These collections of letters are available in books and are worthy of perusal. Abigail urged her husband not to forget the women in developing our country's first governance documents...however, women had to wait a few hundred years for that advice to be heeded.

Today's topic made me think of a great company appropriate to promote today: Men with Pens. The marketing for this company seems to capture in modern form a bit of the spirit of Ben Franklin, who was a bit of an irreverant and authority questioning type of guy.

Men and women with pens (which we can metaphorically consider any tool for communicating ideas) who know how to use them are indeed powerful, and the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword seems very true. The pen often gets things started.

The Importance of Having a Great Vocabulary

Dana — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:12:00 GMT

Yesterday I went to the Houston office of the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation (http://www.jocrf.org/) with my daughter, a bright 17-year-old with several talents who has been a little stressed about future college major and career ideas. Her grandfather kindly sponsored an aptitude testing session. By the way, I highly recommend this outfit for aptitude testing. People as young as 14 can take the test. Johnson O'Connor is a non-profit organization that puts the profit back into research about aptitudes and sponsors some testing for low income secondary students - very good of them, I think.

The testing associate explained that the TOP indicator of success as a business executive is having a large precise vocabulary. He mentioned that The Economist magazine has one of the highest vocabulary levels among magazines and that Bill Gates reads this magazine. Hmm. Bill Gates, one of the richest people in the world, founder of Microsoft, worth tens of billions, and can handle this kind of magazine reading daily. As Mr. Webre said, an average to low vocabulary size can cause people to misunderstand their bosses and clients, which can be very costly.

It can also be costly in personal relationships. I'll never forget the time I used the word 'regression' about my yougest child's behavior due to jealousy as a result of an extended family gathering, and one relative thought I was saying that I had regrets about the gathering. Oops. Luckily this relative is the type who was open about being offended, and the situation was explained and resolved nicely.

How best to expand the vocabulary? Keep a small dictionary handy - in the purse or briefcase, on the laptop, an iPhone application...and use it to look up words you are familiar with seeing and the thought always crosses your mind that you wonder what that means precisely. Don't focus on totally unfamiliar words - unless you are going to buy a vocabulary book from Johnson O'Connor that has a programmed approach. Mr. Webre's formula: look it up, memorize the meaning, and use the word soon and several times.

Did you know that vocabulary can decline? Yes, it can. My GRE Vocab score was 710 when I was in my twenties. I took the test again 3 years ago after years of not looking up very many words, and it had declined to 650.

My resolution: start working on vocabulary again. I started following a vocabulary builder on Twitter (@wordexplorer), and so far the words are ones I have seen, many of which I know, but there are a few that are familiar but I was not sure about the meaning.

My other resolution: help others build their vocabularies.You can follow the Twitter feed mentioned above, and you can also go to the Johnson O'Connor Resources page http://www.jocrf.org/resources/vocabulary.html.

My next few Twitter posts are going to be the meaning of words that Mr. Webre asked my daughter and me about, none of which I answered correctly. They are all familiar to most educated adults, and we should know them. Maybe this will be one word a week in the future!

Happy building!

Web 2.0 and Social Media

Dana — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:59:00 GMT

I've been slowly working on adding different social media websites to my list of places to put myself out there as a business. Today I attended a presentation by Edie McRae of Millionaire Moms Inc that was so inspiring! I loved her response to clients who say they just don't have the time to do social media as a way of networking: you can't afford not to make the time.

This got me to thinking about additional services to offer from SAID & DONE. We are working on learning Dot Net Nuke to use as a powerful website design and content management system. I expect we will be able to offer this to clients by the end of the summer if not sooner. It's a very exciting program that allows users to be assigned different levels of access to parts of a website which they can then update independently without having to know code. This method will save small and medium sized businesses a lot of money. They won't have to pay someone to do all their updates and what's worse - wait a week or more for the udpates to get done. With my background in education it will be easy to develop fun and efficient seminars to train people how to update. We can even record these as videos and make them available to customers.

Now I'm thinking about offering Social Media training and consultation as well. SAID & DONE is all about words and communication, which is the infrastructure of networking. And our attitude is the heart of networking - truly caring about the success of our clients. I think we will be offering a great much desired set of services very soon!

Business Writing 101

Dana — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:49:00 GMT

So many people say, "If I could write better, that would help my business so much." Based on this survey input to the local chapter of the American Business Women's Association, I was invited to give a talk on Business Writing. How can you improve your writing for business purposes? I have a list of 5 ideas to share with you.

1. Don't be a perfectionist.

Spelling and grammar give some people nightmares. Many people in the United States made up their own spelling until only about 150 years ago. Back then, most children didn’t have public education, and most people couldn’t afford a dictionary. That didn’t stop people from writing letters to family and friends. It didn’t stop business owners from writing advertisements, either.

There are plenty of resources today to help with spelling and grammar, including tools in Microsoft Word that help you spell check and grammar check yourself. Anyone can find free dictionary and thesaurus applications on the Internet as well.

Structure and organization cause a lot of stress also. How many paragraphs should you use? What should the first paragraph be about? One of my favorite websites for writing help is the Purdue University OWL, or Online Writing Laboratory. There are lots of examples of different kinds of writing laid out in an easy-to-read format. A great book for writing your own advertising copy is The Copywriters Handbook. One great tip: use the word “free” wherever you can, and put it near the top.

2. Get started with positive self-talk and creativity tasks.

Listen to what your mind is saying to you as you start a writing task. If it is negative thoughts, tell those thoughts, "Stop." Then say something nice about yourself such as, "Up till now I haven't been confident about writing, but I am working on it and my writing will get better. In fact, my writing will make me happy." Then start writing, either on paper or on the computer. Don't censor yourself. Just get the words out. Edit later.

Try to write at least a paragraph a day outside of your business writing tasks. Try to expose yourself to something creative on a regular basis. Fingerpainting, working with crafts, listening to new kinds of music, reading something outside your normal interest area – all these will stimulate parts of your brain that connect to improved writing.

3. Make it easy for your audience to read your writing.

The average reading level of the adult population in the United States is between 6th and 8th grade. You may be surprised how many of your customers and potential customers are in this range. And for the majority of your customers who are reading above this level, finding something on an easier reading level makes better use of their time as they can read such material more quickly. Keep your vocabulary at a simpler level: for example, "use" instead of "utilize," "show" instead of "demonstrate." Microsoft Word has a tool that lets you analyze the reading level of anything you have composed. The reading level of this article is 7.3 (beginning of 7th grade). Just click on the Help button on the standard tool bar and type “display readability statistics” in the search bar to find directions.

Keep your sentences shorter. Incomplete sentences can be acceptable, depending on the tone you want to achieve. Example sentence fragment from a marketing email: Free delivery.

Strive for shorter paragraphs short as well. Having some white space and not filling up a page allows the reader some comfort in reading.

4. Learn to spot and fix run-on sentences.

While a sentence fragment can be acceptable in modern business writing, especially advertising copy, a run-on is a no-no.

Example: We provide free delivery you can shop on our website 24/7.

To spot the run-on sentence, read each sentence and underline the first subject (a do-er, usually a person or thing), and circle the action or state of being (called a verb) that is attached to the subject. Connect the subject and the action with an arched line.

Keep reading as a detective and see if there is another do-er and another action that is connected to the second do-er. If there is, then you may have a run-on. There needs to be a comma or semicolon and a connecting word ...

--, and --, but --, or --; therefore, --; however,

... before the second do-er. Either connect the two parts of the sentence with a connecting word if you haven't, or put a period before the second do-er and make that do-er the start of another sentence.

Here is the run-on sentence analyzed and then shown with two options for writing it correctly:

Correct:

We provide free delivery, and you can shop on our website 24/7.

-or-

We provide free delivery. You can shop on our website 24/7.

5. Change it up.

Another way to say this: variety is the spice of life. And variety certainly adds spice to reading. Read through your piece and try to have each sentence start with a different word. Certainly most people are aware, or should be, that the words “I” or “we” can start far too many sentences.

Make sentences a variety between shorter to medium length. A few can be fragments. Make sure that some of your sentences are questions. Maybe one can be an exclamation.

If you work at it, you can figure out ways to change your sentence word arrangements and choices to avoid boring the reader. Use humor if it is appropriate to the piece. Make up a word. Modify a saying. Famous online marketers do that all the time. Dr. Seuss did it. Use something surprising. What if you wrote "You can shop on our website 24/8"? Then you could go on and write that you know your customers are working what feels like 8 days a week and you are there to help.

-----------------------

You can start today to improve your business and other writing. Go out and get a nice looking journal for your daily writing efforts. Don't worry about spelling and grammar in that journal. Use the tools that are out there to polish your business writing pieces. And have fun with it!