Words of Wisdom by MrWes

Pragmatic Wisdom of Wes Johnson

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The Answers are in front of you

Posted by on Sep 29, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

In my Network Marketing Workshops, I tell everybody to participate in forums.  When someone hears a statement like this they might think of discussion groups.

Some better known discussion groups

They might say, this seems like a lot of trouble or do I really have to join a discussion group just to participate in a forum?

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers

If you are a member of LinkedIn, then the Answers are literally in front of your nose.  You’re already a member of a 40 million member network of people.  All you have to do is click on the Answers tab and you’ll be transported to the Answers section of LinkedIn.  For your convenience, I have added the link here.  www.linkedin.com/answers

When members have questions they go to the Answers section of LinkedIn.  When you visit the Answers section, you can either ask a question or review and answer questions.  The questions are categorized so as you can quickly navigate through the kinds of questions being asked.

Just for fun, you should visit the Answers section to see if you can help.

Always remember, whenever you help by providing your knowledge or insight, you are not only helping them out but you’re helping yourself out too. 

You never know, a future network connection might be waiting for someone just like you to help them with their next venture.

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MrWes celebrates 100th blog

Posted by on Sep 28, 2009 in Blog | 4 comments

A few short months ago, I created my personal blog called  Wes Johnson – MrWes Words of Wisdom.  The blog theme has been based on my life experiences and wisdom gained along the way.  In the spirit of the nature of this blog, I’m going to take a moment to reflect on where it’s been.

My original goals:

  • To generate networking opportunities
  • To market myself as an excellent communicator
  • To share my knowledge and wisdom with my readers

What I received:

  • knowledge – I learned the terminology and how to do many new blogging related activities
  • experience – I have gained hours upon hours of experience while writing and developing ideas for my blog
  • wisdom – I have learned what works and when to use it
  • respect – I have gained the respect of others who have read my work and appreciate my style of communication 

The Journey

WordPress

I started my blogging journey by learning WordPress the web-based framework for making blogs like this possible.  I’m using the self-hosted version, so there were a few access issues that needed to be resolved in order for everything to function properly.

After installing WordPress, I started learning about Themes and how they work within the WordPress framework. Themes are simply the look and feel of the website the user experiences while they’re visiting.  Many themes are free and developed by individuals.  Sometimes, a developer may not have tested or encountered a particular scenario.  This requires a little bit of PHP programming or CSS magic to resolve these issues.

Once my Theme issues were resolved, I moved on to the WordPress Plugins.  A WordPress Plugin allows a developer to extend or create a desired feature that can be shared with the rest of the WordPress community.  There a many popular Plugins that help bloggers improve the user experience.  I have commented on a few.  My most recent discovery was Pretty Link, a WordPress Plugin that aids in creating permalink shortcuts using your domain.  Pretty Link adds an extra edge to those that are trying to develop their brand.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

My journey continued with Search Engine Optimization.  I had to learn the terminology, tools, and techniques to improve opportunities to be recognized by search engines.  Fortunately, there are several WordPress plugins that have helped in my SEO efforts.  SEO isn’t automatic, but the tools make it easier to keep up with the important aspects of SEO.

Google Analytics and Web Tools

Two important tools I’ve been utilizing during my first 100 blogs are Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Toolkit or GWT. 

GWT – helps the blogger/webmaster see which searches are finding their website.  It also points out areas that may be affecting their rankings.

Google Analytics – helps the blogger/webmaster see exactly what’s working and what’s not.  This tool provides great insight into which pages or objects in my website receive the most requests.

Google Analytics provides information like:

  • Traffic sources (Search engine referrals, website referrals)
  • How many unique visitors I’ve had over a period of time.
  • Average Pages per visit
  • Average Duration of visit
  • Which page(s) they land on
  • Which page(s) they leave from
  • Bounce rate for each page.
  • Where the reader is from.  Not specifically, but their geographic information.
  • How many conversions I’ve had.  A conversion is getting a reader to take some kind of action, for me it’s visiting my about page.

A few Google Analytics details for MrWes.net between August 28th and September 27th 2009

  • 50 countries are following my blog
  • top 3 countries are United States, Canada, United Kingdom
  • 47 states in the U.S. are following my blog
  • top 4 states are California, Texas, Florida, New York
  • The bounce rate is 2.5%, when readers find my website, they usually stay a little while and read a few of my blogs.

Content (Ideas)

When I first started, I did have a concern that the flow of my ideas would dimish over time.  I am happy to report that I still have lots of ideas for many more blogs.  Of course, since this is a personal blog, I do have the freedom to write about any topic I wish.

Future endeavors

In an effort to expand my horizons, I have been considering breaking my blog into two parts.  I already have control over the domains mrwes.com and mrwes.net.  I would keep mrwes.net as my personal blog and make mrwes.com more focused on one topic.  Perhaps tutorials and technical support.

What do you think?  Is there a topic you’d like me to spend more time on?

The Journey continues

I hope you have enjoyed my last 100 blogs.  If you have enjoyed them, please feel free to Leave a Reply and let me know how much you’ve enjoyed them.  Tell your family, friends, networks and associates.  You can bookmark blogs that you find useful.  You can track this blog using an RSS feed or Subscribe via email using the Posts icon in the upper right hand corner.

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Venturing Rendezvous 2009

Posted by on Sep 27, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

I spent this past weekend at the Wente Scout Reservation.  The reservation is located in Mendocino County.  Just outside of Willits, California.  Over 250 Scouts from the Venturing program came together from several different counties for a Venturing Rendezvous.  A Venturing Rendezvous is an annual gathering of Venture Crews  and Sea Scouts during the last weekend in September for the purpose of having fun with other Venture Scouts doing Venturing activities.  There were Sea Scouts present and Venture Crews that came from all parts of the Bay area including the Central Valley.

Opportunities for members of Venturing Crews to interact with each other were plentiful.

Organized activities available to Crews were:

  • Shooting Sports
    • Shotgun
    • Rifle
    • Archery
  • Water Sports
    • Swimming
    • Kayaking
    • Canoeing
    • Row boats
    • Sail Boating
  • Mountain Biking
  • Rock climbing / rappelling
  • Horseback riding

One added bonus over this weekend was that my friends and fellow Crew Advisors Ward Shelley brought out his high powered tracking telescope for some cool Astronomy.  His telescope had software that would find visible planets, stars, start clusters and nebulas.  Seeing the heavenly bodies were awesome.

Some of the heavenly sites we saw:

  • Jupiter – we saw 4 of her moons
  • Moon craters near the edge of the Dark Side of the Moon
  • M92 Nebula
  • Butterfly Star Cluster

The scouts had a blast interacting with other crews and having good natured fun.  There were many Crew Team building opportunities with some healthy competition.

It was great getting away from civilization for a while and getting back in touch with nature.

Any Venturing or Sea scouts or groups that attended, please feel free post your comments.

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Plan ahead when developing your Personal Brand Name

Posted by on Sep 25, 2009 in Blog, Branding | 0 comments

When you develop your Personal Brand, the Name you use is one of your most important assets.  Many people have unique names and have little competition for the use of their name. 

Wes Johnson is my name.  Both names, I have discovered, are pretty popular. If you’ve ever done a Google search on the name you’ll find there are a lot of Wes Johnsons.  In fact there are several notable public figures that share the name Wes Johnson.  Since they are in the news, have personal blogs, participate in forums, or have blogs written about them, it has been quite a challenge to be noticed.  In order to be noticed, sometimes you need to be different.

MrWes is my brand name.- A few years back even before I decided to start blogging, a neighbor of mine had started calling me Mr. Wes.  Over time other neighbors, friends and associates started calling me Mr. Wes too.  I really liked that nickname so I decided I would get the domain.  At first I went with the .com and then I decided I would get the .net domain as well.

Stake your claim  - Pick your brand name wisely then grab as much of the internet as you can.

Where to reserve your brand name:

The rest of the MrWes brand story.  Many years after I grabbed my brand name domains, I decided to start writing my blog.  Fortunately, I already had my domain and brand name picked.  So, that wasn’t a problem.  I tried using my brand name MrWes as a user name for forums that I frequented, that’s when I realized that other people were using my brand name for their user name.  Sometimes, I had to choose a variation on my brand name.  Then, I decided to lock up the .ORG just in case, but it had been taken.

Final thoughts – When you create your brand name, make sure you have a plan to stake your claim ASAP.  You don’t want to leave anything to chance.  You need to make sure your name is associated with your message.

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Short URL challenges

Posted by on Sep 24, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

I learned something new while I was teaching my Personal Marketing Workshop yesterday.  I learned that Short URLs, while being convenient, aren’t always a good thing.

Problem - As part of the prerequisites for the workshop, I have the students do some job research.  Many of the links I reference are very long.  In fact because they’re so long there are lots of opportunities to mistype the URLs.  So, I thought it would be nice if I shrank the URLs down to something short.  I used one of the popular web based URL shrinking applications.  It works in theory until you discover the short URL domain is blocked by the firewall.  This is especially frustrating when you’ve gone through the trouble of getting your domain approved by the IT department.  If only there was a way to shorten URLs using my own domain.

Solution - The problem of generating short URLs within a particular domain has been solved in the form of a WordPress Plug-in called Pretty Link. Blair Williams has created a tool for shrinking, tracking, and sharing URLs on the internet.  Pretty Link converts URLs into an Permalink address within the domain it runs on.  Pretty Link creates a random short link for you to use or you can override the suggestion and provide your own.  With this tool I was able the convert the short URLs that weren’t working to similar short URLs that utilize my domain.

Here is an example of some short URLs that were quickly converted to use my domain instead.

http://TwitPWR.com/ske converted to http://mrwes.net/ske
http://TwitPWR.com/skh converted to http://mrwes.net/skh
http://TwitPWR.com/skz converted to http://mrwes.net/skz

Resolution - The chances of the short URL working increases wherever my domain is allowed.  When the short URL is converted back to the original URL  it should work as long as it hasn’t been blocked by the firewall.

Added Benefits – Pretty Link provides these added benefits

  • It puts you in control over your links.
  • You don’t have to worry if the short URL provider will change the rules on you.
  • Your short URLs can be tracked, so you get to see if and when they’re being followed.

Flexibility - Pretty Link provides a lot of flexibility

  • You have several options on how you can create your short URL
  • Redirection types
    • 301 Permanent – not changing
    • 307 Temporary – changing
    • Pretty Bar – show Pretty bar above link
    • Cloak Redirection – hide your Target URL
    • Pixel Redirection – tracking purposes
  • Including URL Parameters
    • with parameters
    • without parameters
  • Pretty Bar Customization
    • Show Blog Title in Pretty Bar
    • Show Blog Description in Pretty Bar
    • Show Share links in Pretty Bar
    • Show Target URL in Pretty Bar
  • With the Pro Version

You might have noticed I’m a little excited about this Plugin.  I definitely recommend it to anyone who is using WordPress as their blogging platform.

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