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Blogs are like potato chips – you can't have just one

November 24, 2008 | No comments

As if I didn’t have enough to do, this past weekend I started two more blogsites. They’re an experiment and we’ll have to see if they take off, but for now, they both fulfill a need for me to focus.

I’ve been doing a lot of drilling down and tightening my marketing, trying to identify whom best to serve and I’ve identified several places where I believe I can be of service and the new blogs specifically address those areas:

1) Confused? will hopefully explain a lot of the technical jargon, techniques and whys and wherefores for entrepreneurs new to solopreneurship, ecommerce and working at home. It is my intent to untangle the spaghetti of advice for those just beginning to explore social networking, setting up a business (including advice for finding webhosting companies, creating domains, setting up blogs and websites, shopping carts, merchant accounts and so on.)

2) Back To One will be my resource to reach those who believe they have lost everything and to help them find within themselves the way to begin again and not be stopped cold by the loss. We will discover the following:

A process for dealing with grief that was not convenient to face at the time a disaster occurred

A process for separating the event from the meaning we’ve attributed to it

A method to climb back out of the hole and begin to rebuild our lives and our fortunes.

I do hope you’ll stop by and check out my new babies. Leave a comment or two to start the ball rolling.

I’ll see you there.

Until then,

Work well, play well, be well.

db

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#wordcampdx – Or, A Good Time Was Had By All – Part II – The Good Stuff

October 11, 2008 | 3 comments

Inside the hallowed halls

Inside the hallowed halls

So,  as I mentioned in my last post, #wordcampdx was off with a bang.  We all traipsed back upstairs to be greeted with cheers that “the t-shirts have arrived”.  I guess their arrival was in question.  Upon further investigation, had I known, I could have driven them down myself since they came from a screenprinter 45 minutes from me!

I say next time #wordcampdx wants to do shirts, they need to order them from The Rainbow Factory for a little somethin’ extra! Full disclosure here – since it’s my husband’s company, I can’t be counted on to be impersonal.  His tiedye is some of the best I’ve seen and even though it’s from Washington State right now, we plan on moving down to the Portland, OR area so it will be really easy!

Anyway – found my spot against the pillar once again to listen to Lorelle continue her talk about how WordPress is changing lives.  Lots of us made our way forward to tell how WP had made a difference, but Lorelle topped us all. Her presentation included a video from a woman I had not heard of (being new to the blogosphere), Glenda Watson Hyatt. The post and the videos are here. What a powerful statement by a woman who without her blogging would be trapped in a silent world of frustration and loneliness. At least in my little section of the room, there wasn’t a dry eye.  Amazing.

Wordpress changes lives

Who was that wild woman from Walla Walla?

Betsy Richter was next talking about building community and a blog in eight, excuse me, ten days.  Really was a fun presentation powered by Betsy’s sense of humor and getitdone attitude.  She has put together a really effective site about Portland and it’s delightful lifestyle.  I CAN’T WAIT TO BE A PART OF IT. If I was waffling at all (I wasn’t) about returning to civilization, Betsy made my mind up for sure.

Following Betsy and a break, we divided into break out sessions led by Aaron Hockley, Chris O’Rourke and Justin Kistner who talked about copyright issues in blogging, plugins for making your blog pop and using WP to manage a social relations program, respectively.

After those we regrouped and discussed the unconferences for that afternoon. Lunch was next with some of the best pizza I’d had in quite awhile.  Yummy.

Since t-shirts have been my life for the past 10 years, I thought it only fair to volunteer to distribute them. Grabbed my slice and a soda and took up residence with Cami Kaos and Kelly Guimont to give them out and there met most of the other attendees, including Rick Turoczy.  Whew, Ain’t I just a little name dropper?

Once folks were fed and shirted, the afternoonsession started with a sneak peek at the new version, WP 7.0 coming out soon.  Pretty exciting stuff, actually!

The afternoon breakout sessions were great, too, dealing with picking themes, honing your blogging engine and getting read. I must admit, I missed out on most of the sessions since I was out in the foyer with Chris Pitzer (thanks Chris, you were a huge help!) figuring out how to get my new resident blog to work.  (I’ve had blogs on WordPress.com for awhile and had that fairlly well figured out, but the one I have with my site is a little more high powered and I’m still figuring things out over here.)

Following those sessions was an experts panel with Lorelle, Aaron, Chris and Justin where they answered numerous questions. Then dinner from Nicholas which was absolutely superb to this gal who has been starved for something other than chicken fried steak or Americanized chop suey. Mmmm, can still taste the Hummus and Tahziki and oh, there was something else like a lamb skewer or something that was just to die for!

Unfortunately, after dinner, I had to leave. I would have liked to stay for the unconferences and the evening festivities but with my headlight out, I wanted to get back to Beaverton before dark.

So, bye bye Wordcamp PDX till next time.  I’ll follow my new friends on Twitter and reference #wordcampdx and keep the thread alive.

Have one for me!

Have one for me!

Comments anyone?

So, until next time, Work well, Play well, Be Well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it:

“DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, “Opportunity’s Knocking, Open The Door” and is a trainer, speaker, and business coach.
If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

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#wordcampdx – Or, A Good Time Was Had By All – Part I – The Arrival

October 4, 2008 | 4 comments

logo and hashtag

logo and hashtag

I can’t believe WordCamp was a week ago already. Now I have been initiated into the mysterious WordCamp family and must say, I’m in for the long run.  Too much fun! Although getting there was fun! (See previous post).

Okay, so here’s what happened.

Decided I would drive down a little early to spend some time with my daughter, Siannan; something I don’t get to do nearly enough of since she’s in school and even when I visit, I have to work around her schedule.  So Thursday afternoon I took off. I normally enjoy the 4-1/2 hour drive down through the Columbia Gorge but this time of year is chancy. Between the gusty winds and inexperienced RV’ers dealing with the gusty winds, it was more challenging that normal.

About the time I got to the section right by the PDX airport, my phone rang and caller ID said my daughter. This is not unusual since she usually calls about that time every trip to ask if I’m there yet. (We both have patience issues).  Anyway this time, she called to tell me she left the door open and make myself at home, she was on her way to URGENT CARE! Every Mommy corpuscle in my body stood up and screamed “Oh, no you don’t!” and I quickly found my way to where she was only to find her with a face so swollen as to be unrecognizable! Poor thing. Abcessed teeth are no fun. I’ve had my share of them.

So since they were closing, they referred us over to the Emergency Room at St. Vincent’s where we were seen by one of the coolest ER docs I’ve seen in years.  Wish I remembered his name. He reminded me of my days as a member of a Trauma Team in Modesto, California and the super docs we had there. He was easy and a little teasing but not deprecatory.  Nice.  Got antibiotics and headed out.

Just out of the driveway, though, while I was looking up at signs to make sure we weren’t on the way back to Walla Walla, when we got hit by another car. I was tired and emotionally wrung out and now had my second accident of my life within a week of the first one! UGH. At least it was the same damaged fender as before.

Took care of business, the gentleman was wonderful to deal with and we drove off to our respective destinations. Next day – instead of shopping and visiting – we spent the day at dentist offices.

Finally, Saturday dawned. The night before, Siannan had promised me she’d set her alarm clock and get us up in time to take mass transit in to CubeSpace where WordCamp was being held. It such a treat for me to ride Max when I go to Portland. She was going to escort me so I wouldn’t get lost.  WordCamp started at 8 a.m. sharp for registration, they were sold out, and at 7:30 I opened my eyes in Beaverton! I threw my clothes on, knocked on her door to make sure she was okay and flew down the stairs from her apartment to my car.  I grabbed my GPS, quickly keyed in the destination and praying all the way, roared onto the freeway.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be to find the US Bank Building on SE Grand and the directions the coordinators had given were crystal clear.  I found my way up to the second floor and was instantly greeted as a long lost relative (even though nobody there had ever even heard of me, much less met me)! I stumbled numbly through the crowd playing the Make Your Own Nametag Game, got mine, then moved in for caffeine only to find the pot of decaf.  I kept threatening to do a blog post entitled “Decaf, Why?” but got talked out of it. Why on earth would anyone have decaffeinated coffee at that hour of the morning for bloggers?

Then, into the big room to find not enough chairs, so I found a comfy place to stand (no, I’m not being sarcastic, there are lots of those at CubeSpace), and sip coffee  while they went over what to do when and how and to whom. Suddenly a shrill voice rang out! It was the Fairy BlogMUTHA! The guy next to me typing merrily away while listening, jumped a foot, spit his coffee all over the table and uttered some interesting words. it was the spit take of all spit takes. Missed the laptop so that was good. And well worth it.

Our darling Fairy BlogMOTHER
Our darling Fairy BlogMUTHA

Lorelle VanFossen had made her appearance and I don’t think CubeSpace will ever recover from the thrill. We listened to her tell us a few things till they shouted GROUP PHOTO!!!!!!!!!!!

Group Photo - #wordcampdx
Group Photo – #wordcampdx

Nothing doing, we had to stop traffic on Grand Avenue! AND THE PEOPLE DRIVING THE CARS DIDN’T BLINK!

Stopping Traffic in Portland
Stopping Traffic in Portland

More to come in the next post.

db

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Something Recently Herd

September 21, 2008 | 4 comments

As many of you know, I use Google Reader to get blog feeds from my favorites.  Saves me time and keeps me abreast of what’s going on in the blogosphere.  I also get quite a few via email. I’ve trained myself to pay attention to trends and inclinations (my Economy and Sociology professors from college would be very proud of me). Here’s what I have observed:

There seems to be a subconscious connection between entrepreneurs who blog. More often than not, subject matter runs along similar tracks.  I find patterns all the time.  For instance, everybody was writing about optimizing websites for SEO, then about using teleseminars, then about using what you know and what you’ve learned to teach others. It’s kinda fun to watch.

My point is this: you can keep yourself on the cutting edge just by watching what everybody else is talking about in the blogosphere. Optimize your business. Use Self-Exploration-Optimization then write down everything you find. Keep up with what your competition is doing and take a step ahead.

One of the reasons I really like to use Google Reader is that only the title and synopses come across and I can quickly scan them all (average daily entries number 135) to get the trends and focus, then read the ones I have the most interest in first.

Here’s my process for those of you who would like to try it out.

  1. Set up a Google Reader Account. This requires a Gmail account so if you don’t have one, get one, It’s easy and it’s free.
  2. Pay attention to the blog trackbacks and permalinks and visit the links to see if there’s anything interesting first and foremost.  Subscribe using RSS and select Google Reader as the receiving reader.
  3. Daily (or whatever schedule works for you), visit your Google Reader site and see what’s there.
  4. Scan through the titles and open the ones that really excite your interest in another page to read the whole post.  Don’t worry, they’ll hang out patiently waiting for you.  The goal is to clear your Reader box.  Once you scroll down through the entries they disappear so if you don’t want that, you either need to mark them to keep as unread in the little box at the bottom of the entry or open them up in another window.  (By the way, opening them up in another window also allows you to make comments to the ones you want to.  Another bonus).
  5. Now grab a favorite beverage and read your entries.  Take notes, make comments or whatever you do with a blog entry now.

This way you can get through required reading quickly and painlessly.  I have three blogs I look for religiously every day, Shannon Cherry’s Start Up Spark, Stepcase Lifehack, and Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities weblog (this one is great for keeping up on what’s new in the field). The others all have to do with supporting my business growth in one fashion or another.

So give that a try and see what happens. People always ask how I keep up with all that I do.  This is one of my secrets, but I share it with you, my friends.

So until next time,

Work well, play well, be well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it: “DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, Opportunity’s Knocking , and is a successful speaker, meeting facilitator, trainer and business coach. If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

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Interesting, this blogging experience

September 12, 2008 | 6 comments

I have spent the whole day working on my blogs. I can’t believe it’s already after 5pm and I’ve been sitting in this chair with only a few necessary runs down the hall since 8am! I’ve had a ball, too!

It all started with my Google Reader. If you don’t use this to keep up with your favorite blogs, you’re missing out on something. All the latest posts in one spot.  Marvelous.  Anyway – I started reading through my posts (I subscribe to quite a few blogs) and got to Lorelle VanFossen‘s. That did it.  I merrily read through her entries till I got to the one on doing your own search engine optimization.  That started it. I took the article line by line till I had made all the suggested changes.  You really need to read this article for yourself. There are way too many good things to do.  The article is actually “Designing WordPress Themes For the Slowing Web” and within it are over 30 links to other how to articles, all of which were very helpful.

I looked up and it was 1pm!

Next I read Yan Susanto’s Thou Shall Blog; Blogging For Beginners entry on post-install clean up.  4 hours later, I’m still not sure whether I got things right, but I feel like I made a good mess!

What I find remarkable is that with the access of the internet I can send a quick email to either of these prominent authors and get a quick answer within a few hours.  Lorelle is in Oregon, I believe, and Yan is in Kuala Lumpur! How wonderful that just the experience of writing (which is normally a very solitary endeavor) has created a global community of supportive, intelligent people all wanting to help newbies. Very inspiring.

I have several blogs, as you all know, but up till today, I had looked upon them as a marketing tool, to let prospective clients see what I know. Now they’ve become an access point to others doing what I’m doing, sitting at their computers and reaching out to others to create a network of experts that all of us within can depend upon to deliver our best customer service.

I feel like I’ve just hired a brainstorming team and all because of working on a thing that had its roots as an online journaling tool.

I think, therefore I blog?????

Until next time,

Work well, Play well, Be Well

db

(c) 2008 DeBorah Beatty

Want To Use This Article in Your Ezine or Website? You have my permission, as long as you include this complete notice with it:

“DeBorah Beatty publishes innovative tips and resource information in her blog, “Opportunity’s Knocking, Open The Door” and is a trainer, speaker, and business coach.

If you’re ready to move to the next level, check out her website, DEBORAHBEATTY.COM “

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