Archive for September, 2009

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The Answers are in front of you

September 29th, 2009

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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Posted in Marketing, Social Networks

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MrWes celebrates 100th blog

September 28th, 2009

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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Posted in Blogging, Plugins, Review, Success, WordPress

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Venturing Rendezvous 2009

September 27th, 2009

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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Posted in Camping, Fitness, Outdoors

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Plan ahead when developing your Personal Brand Name

September 25th, 2009

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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Posted in Branding, Marketing

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Short URL challenges

September 24th, 2009

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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Posted in Plugins, Review, WordPress

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Social Media breaks down barriers

September 22nd, 2009

Last week I listened to a great speech from Carlos Hernandez at iRM Consulting.  He shared his expertise with the audience at a Career Strategy Forum hosted by the Northern Silicon Valley Partnership. 

Building Networks utilizing Social Networking tools – Carlos talked about Web 2.0 and the importance of utilizing the technology for networking.  He mentioned several great ways to use social networking tools to build social networks.

I think one of the most notable things he mentioned for me was that Social Media breaks down age barriers or perceptions of people.  This is definitely something I plan to share with the people in my Social Networks.  During his speech he also discussed other strategies for increasing networking opportunities.  The final note of his speech was of course to remind everyone not to discount the importance of old fashioned face to face networking.

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Posted in Social Networks

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Resizing your image for social network profile

September 21st, 2009

Have you ever uploaded a picture for your social network profile only to discover it was resized on you?  The problem is not that it was resized, the problem is with the scale.  If the scaling isn’t proportional then that great picture might not be so flattering.  It will be like looking in one of those Distortion Mirrors in the Fun House.  It could distort the picture so much that it doesn’t represent the true you.

There are 3 options to resolve this issue:

  1. Offer your techie friend a coffee, Jolt or Rockstar in return for helping you scale your image to the right size.
  2. Resize and crop it yourself using a graphic program.
  3. Resize and crop it yourself using an online utility.

Option 1 should be relatively quick & painless.  They’ll ask you to send them an email with your picture enclosed.  They might ask you the following questions:

  • Which social network is this for?
  • What are the dimensions in pixels?
  • Which image format do you need?

Option 2 is not as simple, since you will be doing the work yourself.

  • Open your image file using a graphic program that will allow cropping and resizing images.  My favorite is Paint.NET, a free photoshop like program.
  • To keep the whole image
    • Select Image Resize
    • Make sure “Maintain aspect ratio” is checked.  This will ensure the width is proportional to the height.
    • Resize to the desired pixel size.
  • To keep part of the image
    • Change view from inches or centimeters to pixels
    • Use rectangle select tool to outline the area of your image you want to work with.  As you resize the rectangle, it should show the approximate size of your cropping area.
    • Crop selected area.  This might be an icon or a menu selection depending on the graphic program you’re using.
    • The cropped area might not be the perfect size yet.  Your width or height might be a few pixels too big.
    • Now you can resize the canvas.  Paint.NET has this option.
    • Turn off the aspect ratio.  We don’t want to distort the cropped area.
    • Adjust height or width to fit the exact pixel dimensions required for your profile.
    • Save the file using the dimensions as part of the name “myPic_50×50.jpg” or “myPic_50×50.gif”

Option 3 is probably the simplest method of all to resize your image for social networks.

  • Visit http://mypictr.com/ a web based social picture resizing application
  • In most cases it takes only 4 steps to create a resized picture that is customized to the desired social networking profile requirement.
    1. Browse and load the picture from your local hard drive.
    2. Select the desired social network.  This determines the required dimensions.  From what I could tell they have most of the networks I know about.  They also allow the user the manually set the dimensions.
    3. Select image view
      • Drag the floating visibility frame to your desired picture focus
      • NOTE: The darker area outside the box will not be part of the picture.
      • You can use the zoom to adjust the scale of the picture.  Zoom out to get more of the picture.  Zoom in to get less.
    4. Create the picture
      • Once the picture has been created, you can download it to your local hard drive or send it to yourself via email.

My personal choice was Option 3. Of course, I’m already that techie guy and the web application mypictr.com saved me a lot of extra work.

For those who aren’t techie people, just choose Option 1 and ask your techie friend to show you how they did it.  Then you’ll know how to do it the next time you need it.

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Posted in DIY, Facebook, Review

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Farm Town / FarmVille news

September 19th, 2009

Here are some of the latest developments in our favorite Facebook farm applications.  I recently wrote a blog on Farm Town or FarmVille.  In the blog I mentioned that Farm Town had twice as many required clicks for harvesting.  It appears that Harvesting in Farm Town has improved.

Faster harvest option

Faster harvest option

Improved harvesting User Interface in Farm Town

They have added a Faster harvesting option.  In the past you would take 2 clicks for each field you wanted to harvest.  You would click to select the field, then you would click to sell or click to store the harvested crop.

Now, after you select a crop to harvest and a method (sell or store) you are presented with this dialog.  Asking if you want to use this option for the rest of the session.  This is already making the harvesting more fun.

One thing is still missing, you can’t queue up the harvesting.  You still have to do it one field at a time.  So, when you measure this against FarmVille, they both take approximately the same number of clicks.

FarmVille Hot Air Balloon

FarmVille Hot Air Balloon

Special Weekend Balloon Sale

While we were working one of the FarmVille properties there was a notice that said a Hot Air Balloon was available during the weekend.  We jumped right on that opportunity to have a really cool decoration for the farm.

Networking at it’s best

When there are features that have been added or special purchase items in your favorite application, it’s always nice to know that your friends are looking out for you and will let you know that these opportunities exist.  I’ve shared these with you, now share this information with your friends.

Happy Farming !!!

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Posted in Facebook, User Interface

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What happened to my Career?

September 18th, 2009

Bad News – In today’s economy people are looking at their career choices and saying, “What happened to my career?  I was supposed to have this career until I retire.  Is it ever going to come back or do I need to change my career? What am I going to do now?”  Their future looks bleak in their own mind.  But what about reality?  Is their career really dead or is it just waiting for the economy to pick up? How are you going to find out this information?

Good News – There is a resource that can help you figure out if your career is heading the way of the dinosaur or if it will be making a come back.  This resource is called the Occupational Outlook Handbook. 

This handbook covers all the details of just about any occupation you might think of.  It even has a “Search OOH box” that will let you search for keywords in occupations.

Once you select a particular occupation, it provides all kinds of information about employment details, training, qualifications, projected growth, earnings, related occupations

Verify your Occupation Projections in your Industry - the job outlook shows projected employment from 2006 – 2016.  It will give you the employment delta as a number and a percentage.  If you discover that your chosen career is receding, it might be time to look at the Related Occupations information.

At this point, many people start to take a serious look at what their Transferable Skills are and where their career is headed.  Many times, they don’t know what they’re going to do next, but they do know the career they once had appears to have disappeared or trending that way in the future, at least until the economy picks up again.

Browse Occupations in other Industries - Remember, all of your experience you have acquired while working and going to school does count for something.  It’s called Transferable Skills.  These are skills learned elsewhere that can be transferred or applied to a future job.  I would encourage you to look at several different occupations available in each industry.

Researching Occupations:

 I hope these sites/tools provide you with some solid career choices as you consider which steps to take next in your career

Good luck in your career research.

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Posted in Career

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An acronym for FOCUS

September 17th, 2009

Yesterday, I wrote a blog called “LASER Focus,” in the blog was an acronym for LASER which consisted of words that were very precise and focused.  After I was finished with that blog, I started thinking about that acronym and decided I should create one for the word FOCUS as well.  So here it is.

Focalize

In order to focus on anything first you need to know what you’re going to focus on.  In other words, you need a vision.  A definition of what you’re supposed to be doing.  Once you have that vision, you can   Then you can align your sight to the focal point or Vision. 

Objective

Why are you focusing on this thing?  What are you supposed to do with it?  This would be your mission.

Concentrate

The next step is to concentrate your efforts or increase the intensity of your efforts on the desired outcome or mission.  By concentrating the distractions will not influence you when it comes time to complete the mission.

Unambiguous

The mission should be clear and unambiguous.  There should be no doubt as to where or what to put your sights on.  A clear mission will direct you in the right direction.  It will prevent you from wasting your time going down the wrong path.

Strategy

Finally there’s the Strategy, the plan that will help guide your and streamline your efforts at accomplishing the mission.

FOCUS:

  • Focalize – to align your sight to a focal point (The Vision)
  • Objective – the goal of your actions (The Mission)
  • Concentrate – intensify your efforts to fulfill the mission
  • Unambiguous – no uncertainty or doubt as to the desired outcome (The Mission)
  • Strategy – The plan to accomplish the mission

    • The next time you FOCUS on a task, think of this acronym.  It might help to improve your accuracy in accomplishing your goals.

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    Posted in Success

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