Is Your Internet Presence
Keeping Up-To-Date?

Volume VI, Issue 8
ISSN: 1547-7754
January 2009
printable version

Chris King, Editor
By subscription only, this monthly e-newsletter is loaded with short, "down and dirty" tips to help you with solving the everchanging and growing puzzle of the Internet. This e-zine serves as a place to ask your questions and find the answers. So, send me your burning questions.

Important Note! To access the books in the Right Hand margin along with the featured links, click on the printable version and they will all become live links.

With this issue of the Internet Tips E-zine, I decided that being the beginning of a new year, it would be the perfect time for us to evaluate where we are on the ever-changing and fast-growing Internet.

Are you and I keeping up with the many does and don’ts of website design and development, the pervasive and overwhelming use of Web 2.0, and the plethora of tools available on the Internet to help everything work together? Gone are the days when we were on the “cutting edge” because we knew how to and used e-mail. So, together let's evaluate where we stand.

EVALUATION #1. Is Your Website a Relic from the Past?

Take a hard and critical look at your current website(s). Ask yourself the following questions:

• Is my content up-to-date and timely? Do I list events from a year or more ago? Is the copyright date two or three years old?
• Is it obvious that I used one of the simple website design programs that are offered when signing up for hosting. The dead give-away is when the hosting company tells you that it will be easy to use (no prior knowledge of HTML necessary).
• Does the site has all of the features we used to use: a “Welcome to my website,” A counter of the number of visitors somewhere on the Home page, a Flash generated splash page, frames, and distracting animation (graphics especially)?
• Is the template familiar and the photographs of the people definitely stock photos – not only used on many websites, but obviously a template generated by FrontPage and photos of people not part of the business portrayed?
• Is my website missing the following: a title that shows up at the top of the browser (super necessary for search engine optimization – SEO), contact information, easy and quick navigation, audio and/or video.
  

EVALUATION #2. Are You Making Use of Web 2.0, or Social Networking?

If you haven’t already read two of the previous E-Zines, Do You Use Social Networking for Marketing (and Fun, too)? and Social Networking: The Five Biggest Mistakes Nichepreneurs™ Make be sure to before continuing.

From Wikipedia: “The characteristics of Web 2.0 are: rich user experience, user participation, dynamic content, web standards and scalability. Further characteristics, such as openness, freedom and collective intelligence by way of user participation, can also be viewed as essential attributes of Web 2.0.” It was pointed out that the tools have been on the Internet already, but were not used as they are today. Questions to ask yourself:

• Do I have a blog? It is almost considered a necessity today, and many marketers on the Internet use their blog as their main website, but posting to it at least once a week and, even better, daily.
• Am I involved with social networking? If so, with which ones and how credible is my involvement? Personally, my favorites are Facebook (I already have 940 friends from all over the world and am connecting with many on a good relationship basis), LinkedIn (more of a business type group), and Twitter (recommended by the top marketing gurus of the Net). Note: they all take some time to get used to and also some time to hook up and benefit from involvement.
• Am I making use of the many ancillary tools like Squidoo, Hubpages, YouTube, and Digg?

EVALUATION #3. Have I or Will I Check Out the Following Tools?

• http://www.stumbleupon.com/ StumbleUpon helps you discover great websites. Whether it's a web page, photo or video, our personalized recommendation engine learns what you like, and brings you more.
• http://www.epinions.com  As a member, you can: Share your own opinions, Earn Income Share for your reviews, Add products to your wishlist, Rate others' reviews, Be alerted to new reviews on a product, Create your own profile, Build a personal Web of Trust
• http://www.ehow.com  What would you like to do? How to Write an eHow Article?  How to Lower Blood Pressure?  How to Earn Money on eHow?   eHow is the world's most popular place to find step-by-step instructions on how to do just about everything.
• http://www.ezinearticles.com  EzineArticles.com is a matching service -- bringing real-world experts and ezine publishers together. Expert Authors & Writers are able to post their articles to be featured within the site. Our searchable database of hundreds of thousands of quality original articles allows email newsletter publishers hungry for fresh content to find articles that they can use for inclusion within their next newsletter.

As usual, I know I have only scratched the surface. I do hope that I have encouraged you to "get with it" and try some of the exciting and new tools and methods happening on the Internet.

I also hope that I have encouraged you to review past issues. To find their titles, click HERE.

Do send your comments and questions to me at chris@creativekeys.biz. I love to receive feedback and will answer your questions in future e-zines.