Or how can I get linked to social networking sites?

For a website or business this is how you can create viral growth. With each person who comments, recommends or likes your website on Facebook, there are several people who see that. Some will visit your site. Some will visit and recommend, and some will even recommend your site simply because someone else recommended it.

What should I do?

The key is to help your readers share your website. Add a social bookmarking plugin to your WordPress posts. Sociable and Sexy Bookmarks are quite popular. By visiting the Facebook developers site you can create a “like” button that you can add to your widgets to be ever present reminder for readers to “like” your website. Encourage readers to share by asking. Yes, it really is as simple as asking them to share the site. By the way, please click the like button on my website.

Why is this important?

With these tools, your readers can make a public statement about your website. These typically offer a link, to your website or post. When someone shares this information it becomes a post on their social networking site wall, it becomes an item that can be searched, and on Facebook it becomes part of their profile. Imagine your website flashed across several profiles. Each profile could bring you several people, viral advertising. Best of all this viral advertising is free.

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MJ Schrader

Tomorrow will cover how to add Facebook to your blog WITHOUT PLUGINS!!! (Yes, you can do it!)

What is Facebook?

First you need to get an understanding of what Facebook is. This site is a social networking site. Thus it allows individuals to network with those they know and sometimes because of various connections, people start networking with those they do not. The conversations shared, pictures, videos and other media made available through the network is called social media.

Why is that important?

When people see someone commenting on the same items, there may be a connection made, even a friendship. The people on Facebook share information to connect with friends and in this way they connect with new friends. You may notice two friends who do not know each other suddenly become connected because of you and their similar comments on your posts.

While it may be strange that people become connected this way, it is as it always has been.  The difference is now people connect online.  Before social networking, people mostly had to connect in person.  Now, people who have similar interests, like similar items, may choose to connect.  They will also alert one another of things they find interesting.

So when someone sees something like the above on a friend’s site they might just check it out.  This way people share what they like and others can know in case they might like it as well.

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MJ Schrader

Tomorrow will cover “Why Do I Need Facebook?”

There are too many variable

If you have WordPress there are over 11,000 plugins and over 1000 themes. Any person can have any number of plugins. There are dozens of themes with options to modify their appearance. Thereby we are talking probably millions of possible combinations.

However there are more variables, in addition to themes and plugins there are web host services. There are hundreds of different hosting options available. They can add in another variable that can mean something can work on one web host and not another.

Add into this equation that people have different browsers and what may work on one will not work on another. All of my sites are built with me using Firefox. I have tested most of them in Chrome and Opera. There are also Internet Explorer, Safari and other lesser known browsers. These read themes differently so the curved corners on Firefox 50WomenProject.com do not show up on Internet Explorer and actually mess up a bit in Opera.  Addons, plugins and other features can make their browser more unique and add more variables.

Let’s also add into the equation that some people are on PCs and others are on Mac. Then there is Linux which is a another operating system. These read and respond differently to different plugins, themes and such.

Oh, and since we do not have enough variables… let’s add in the fact that a regular monitor and a widescreen monitor pick up things differently. So when you visit one website with a regular monitor, that was designed on a widescreen, it may appear that things on the sidebar are cut in half.

What are you trying to say?

All of this is to say that you can not please everyone and take every possible variable into account. You can take most of them into account. You can make it work for the majority of the people who visit your website. You cannot make it work for every single person who comes to your website.

Someone is liable to tell you that you have the wrong plugins, theme or combinations because your website made their browser crash. Maybe, maybe not. It may be the cookies from a site they visited earlier disagrees with your site. It may be a random variable. It may not, but if your site works for most people then be happy!

Check your site on a couple different browsers. Ask friends who use different browsers or computer types to check your website. If there are problems turn off all your plugins and turn the back on one by one testing as you go. Try a different theme. Try http://IsMyBlogWorking.com. Once you are confident your website works for most people, do not worry about people who say your website crashes or does not work.  You have a great website!

Live, Laugh, Love

MJ Schrader

Since I stopped writing daily posts here, I have been working on building three websites at once.   One is the project page and two are replacement sites for 2 I have currently.  They need updating, changes to reflect some changes.  During this time I am also working on 3 others’ sites.  My mom’s and 2 friends.

When I started doing sites, I didn’t know what I was doing, so there was no pattern.  After dozens of sites, there is a specific pattern that I have never written down.  At least until now.  Someone asked me how do I recall and what was my list.  After some thought; here it is, of course this depends on if it is my site or for someone else, or the particular needs of the site.  The things marked with * are what I do for my site.

* Get Domain Name
Transfer Domain Name to Web Host
Addon Domain Name at host
Install WordPress via Fantastico
Use File manager to copy standard plugins (8 to 10) to the new site.
Go to site, make necessary WP upgrades and plugin upgrades.
Activate current plugins
Go to site, install site particular plugins, activate, check working status.
Set up plugins.
Check working status again, adjust settings as necessary.
Go to appearance, install themes, select “Theme options.”  Then choose theme that matches theme of the site. My list of favorite themes is below.
Customize the theme ~ Colors and fonts  (according to their requests or my “vision”)
* Make adjustments to colors, make more adjustments to colors
Create a header graphic.  Check it on the site.  Modify as necessary.
* Get site appearance checks (ask at Social Networking site where you have a small following if they like the way it looks) Modify based on their comments.
Customize the theme further in the code editor 
Create a favicon.   (Free tool)
Add and move widgets to appropriate places
Check the website appearance and correct
Add autoresponder ($1 trial)
* Write About page
* Write necessary beginning posts
* Write necessary pages 
Check website details and correct

You will notice I correct quite often.  But when you add plugins, and widgets, and add components you may see things are not working out quite right.  And with appearance, you may notice the big things the first times, and see other details while working on set up.  Some details will only show up on rare occasion.  Very weird to have a red and white set up and suddenly a purple line show up. But those details give the site a complete look.  Such as the favicon.  (that little icon right beside my site name up in your address bar.

Now you know what I have been up to since I stopped daily posting at Rockstar Guide Books.

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MJ Schrader

Good Customizable themes

1. GoodTheme
2. Themes by itxitx
   1. Bombax
   2. Albizia
   3. Calotropis
3. SWIFT 5.29 by Satish Gandham
4. Techozoic Fluid by Jeremy Clark
5. Feed Me, Seymour 1.1.2 by c.bavota
6. Magazine Basic
7. Twenty Ten (New WordPress 3.0 theme)
8. Weaver (works on the TwentyTen Framework)

EXTREMELY Customizable, to the point they have too many details for me.

1. Twordder
2. Lead Producer

1.  Ask fellow bloggers.  There are bloggers who want to write guest posts, some may be your friends, or you can look for ones that have blogs are similar to yours.    You may be able to ask them for a post or two or even a regular spot.  Some bloggers will be glad to step up.

2.  Use articles from Article websites.  Ezine articles is a great place to get articles.  You can find over 300 articles I wrote just by checking my author bio. You will find fabulous articles on WordPress, online tools,  success, motivational.   You can search by the terms you need with the author name to get articles by a certain author.

3.  Check out Public Domain works.  There is a lot of good information provided by the government or older than copyright laws that is available for public use.

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MJ Schrader

Single site development, this method means putting emphasis on the single site. This means developing social interaction with visitors. This one site means it is easier to share with others. Spending time to come up with beneficial posts and development of relationships is critical, which can be a disadvantage to some.

There are several different ways to cover a niche.

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MJ Schrader

How about a whole suite of tools?

You may know Mozilla as the creators of Firefox, but they have other programs as well. They actually a suite of creative applications that can be added to your Firefox or used as is in your browser. Just by visiting Aviary.com you can see the 8 tools together.

Phoenix allows you to edit images.

Roc can help you create music and can be used with Myna

Talon is a screen capture program. Capture web pages, then edit, crop, resize or mark the image.

Myna is an audio editor. Remix music or audio tracks. Record your voice and instruments or apply sound effects.

Raven conquers vectors, allowing to edit vector images online.

Falcon can quickly capture images and web pages from brower or desktop.

Peacock changes things as you see fit. This effects editor works just by pulling the effect into the mix.

Toucan allows you to use or create color swatches and palettes.

As you can guess with this many tools in one place, you could do a lot of different things. They have video tutorials and quick guides to help you get started. Knowing that you might feel overwhelmed, they also offer Frequently Asked Questions and site instructions not just instructions on the individual tools.

You can even set up and save your files online Aviary. This allows you to share and use your images and creations in more ways.

If you have found your niche, congratulations!  Now that you have, do you know what the next steps are? Finding your niche is just the first step in the niche business success blueprint.

What are you going to offer?

Have you researched to find products that fit your niche? What problems do people have? If you are going to provide a service or a product, even a digital product, have you studied the market to see if you can fill that problem or problems?

Are they willing to pay?

For a niche business, earning money is essential. While you may have the very best solution to a problem, it will not matter if the people will not pay. Even if there are some buyers, you need enough to make your niche business work.

Your niche business blueprint

A business is as unique as you are. There are no rules that are guaranteed to work or not work, these are guidelines to help you succeed. You need to consider if your market is big enough to have buyers and small enough to have a target market. Finding buyers and something to sell is the goal that is an absolute must.

Today’s post was going to focus on blogging and in the world apart from social media and web-centric life. While this was the goal, a tweet showed up on my stream:

Apparently Wired announced the The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet. Well, it does not take reading that article at all to announce the web is far from dead. But let’s continue with this argument for the sake of beginners and people who worry about the future.

Wired argues that apps (meaning applications) are taking over the world. And while the internet is available on more things; think of your phone, your game console, even the DVR that streams Netflix; people are not actually on the web.

Well, first off the number of people on the web has grown substantially over the last 15 years. Then few people had dial up internet, waiting forever for the whir and pop that your connection actually reached an open line and connected. Then came broadband and cable. All 3 I got when these were fairly new and geeky phenomena.

Photo by Todd Huffman WiFi in Afghanistan

Yet now these are common and growing, as more and more people join the online community. This means that the graphics of people doing this or that on WIRED is total bunk! People AROUND THE WORLD expect to have these  connections and even better to have WiFi so we can connect where ever we are with whatever piece of technology we have with us at the time.

In this aspect, I am behind. The last job and then lack there of have kept my personal technology behind. My cell phone recently died, and I finally got a Blackberry. Since I  send daily pictures to Facebook and Posterous, I quickly got the Facebook app. “It makes Facebook easier” and takes your Blackberry from quick, back to dial up days of Internet and computing speed.

Let me assure you, I got that off  my Blackberry quicker than… well,  my boyfriend’s favorite quote. Do I really think that apps are going to take over? NO. Some people will always value quality over convenience.

Another thing is that this goes back to the fallacy pointed out in the DoFollow myth with people making certain everything they do is Google friendly. Did I find that article by visiting Wired or Nieman Journalism Lab?

No, I had never even heard of Nieman Journalism Lab. I found the article because Bill tweeted it. Since I trust Bill’s judgment and the title seemed interesting I read it. How did I find the other articles? I clicked the links included the first article.

With many articles I would read some comments to see various arguments. Someone with good points I would click their name to see their blog. Then read their articles, and comments and continue this post on for days as I again and again point out that social networking is going to keep the web growing for years to come.

And yet as I do want to continue to have posts for the rest of the week I shall end my argument here.

Speaking of social networking, join my fan page Facebook.com/LoveRockstar and Twitter Twitter.com/Loverockstar and while we are being social, visit Bill Hibbler.Com

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MJ Schrader

Bill Hibbler is a wonderful expert, who helped me create the quote I use as part of my branding.   “Making your inner rockstar shine in business and life.”    This brief sentence encapsulates who I am and what I do for you in 30 seconds.  You want to be a rockstar at least in spirit and that is my job.

The advantage is this gives you more exposure which can increase your blog followers

Today is going to cover some steps to implement.

Add the NetworkedBlogs app to your Facebook.

From the new page, click the Add a new blog.

You will need to verify your blog. There are 2 ways to verify your blog. One get friends to say you are the blog author, which has the advantage of getting friends to subscribe and get you started towards the 20 followers. When you have 20 followers you will be listed as blog on networked blogs.

The alternative is that you copy the html code they give you and paste it somewhere on your blog. You can paste in a text widget on your blog.

If you have a fan page, visit your fan page and click the + sign. This will allow you to add a new tab, from the drop down select Networked blogs.

You can also repeat the above step on your profile.

Now your blogs will automatically post to your wall.

If you want to add a specific post to your wall click the Networked Blogs button under the status box. Then select the post you want.

To add the widget, just click widget on your blog profile page.  Select the widget you want, you have two choices.  Then select all of the code in the box.  Then go back your blog and choose widgets under appearance.    Then pull a text box over to your sidebar and paste the code into the text box.  Your widget should appear.

This will help you get more website traffic which will help grow your business.

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love

MJ Schrader