When it comes to your website you don’t want to be going “viral” by spewing malware. In the last month, I have helped two website owners whose blogs and websites were infected and had been banned by Google get back in business. It can happen to the best business really.

In fact, in the last two months two of the problems have been clients who have been hosted on Network Solutions. That’s a big firm and you would think that your website would be safe there, but in one case we found that the infection and re-infection was not coming from the outside but rather from Network Solutions internally. It appears that their systems had been compromised and the source of intrusions were coming from their own servers. That’s really a terrible situation and devastating to their own web hosting business.

One of the other sites was hosted at a small webmaster either in a privately branded enterprise or on a server in his own office. We’ve also seen sites on GoDaddy be compromised as well recently.

So what’s the best solution? I tell my clients that really any host could have this problem, but you have a better chance of being malware and hack-attack free when you use a mainstream host. Personally, I like Hostway. My own website has been hosted at Hostway since 2001 and many of my own clients. I have not had a single incident on my own site or on my Hostway hosted client sites. Yes, you will pay for improved security when you work with a quality mainstream webhost, but ask any of the victims I have worked with recently and they would have paid it willingly if they could have only known what problems being infected would cause as well as the expense to repair the damage.

In some cases Google will tag a site in the search index if it spiders malware spewing code on a website page. There is nothing more devastating than seeing your site with a warning on Google. You literally will be shut down and may even take a “black eye” with customers when this happens to you.

One of the best ways you can make sure you aren’t spewing malware is to list your site in the Google Webmaster control panel and keep an eye on your own organic search placement. In the cases I have worked on, two had the warning notice on Google.com and only one had a notice in the webmaster control panel. But there were other signs such as funny keywords appearing as queries in your Google Webmaster results, and funny code appearing as your meta description in search results.

You’ve just got to keep an eye on your own web presence and use any tools you can to make sure you don’t become the next victim for the criminals that want to use your site to spew their malware. Be vigilant to be safe!

I have just recently added TweetMeme to my blog. That’s the little icon to the right of each post that allows you to click the word tweet and share my content on Twitter, plus tracks how many people have retweeted a blog post.  This is similar to the Digg icon you may have seen on the Web on other sites.

Both TweetMeme and the Digg icon allow for easy ways to encourage the sharing of your content in new innovative ways. Take a look at the bottom of our blog post and you will also see our Share This icon. This WordPress plug-in gives your readers more options to share your content on Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking sites.

The reason I have chosen TweetMeme over the Digg icon is simply that I am much more active on Twitter at this time than I am on social bookmarking sites.

It is very simple to set up TweetMeme on your blog or on your web pages.  Here is a link to the TweetMeme plug-in page for WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and other applications. If you prefer to install TweetMeme on a web page, here is the link to the code creator for pages, RSS feeds, emails, and other ways to share your content.

By encouraging the sharing of your content you reach a much wider audience and create more opportunities for your content to go viral. TweetMeme makes it easy!

Okay, I admit it, I have dabbled half heartedly with social networking for the last year. Yes, I do have the cursory MySpace site, a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn profile, but I have not embraced social networking; it seems like too much trouble.

It wasn’t until this last month that I decided I really should carefully evaluate social networking to see how the typical business owner could use social networking for successfully growing their business and connecting with customers.

I selected LinkedIn as the social networking service I would really focus on. One reason is that this is where many professionals in my business arena have migrated. MySpace is still owned by the high school set, Facebook by the college and young professional set (although I do use and like Facebook too), and LinkedIn has become the social networking platform of choice for most business professionals such as myself.

What I found out in my testing was, well, shocking. So much so, that it has dramatically changed my viewpoint of social media and social networking. Here’s my candid experience and story.

In mid August, I had 10 contacts on LinkedIn. I had simply connected to anyone who had sent me an invitation. I had not aggressively tried to grow my own network. My point of view was I was incredibly busy and spending time on a social enterprise was “fluff” and consumed time that I simply did not have.

So, one afternoon, I decided I would give it a “real go” as research for an article for this e-newsletter. I loaded my Outlook address book to LinkedIn and clicked “send invitations”. I didn’t even do a custom message, as I was so half hearted on embracing this new “time pit” called social networking. What happened in less than 30 minutes staggered me. I had clients, contacts, and prospects send responses, some with an immediate link to connect with me, others with personal notes. I earned nearly 20 new connections in a very short period of time. Wow, what a response and nearly immediate! What I found was that people are hungry, no, starving to connect.

I then went a step further and sent a request for recommendations to a number of clients. In no less than another 30 minutes I had five excellent reviews of my services that were posted on my LinkedIn profile. As I staggered away from my computer, I was shaken with how quickly all this had all happened. Word of mouth testimonials are “worth their weight in gold” for a business such as mine.

I was able to get an approval from each client to use the recommendation on my website for marketing purposes. (If you post testimonials on your own website, you know and understand how truly important great comments can be toward establishing your authority and winning new clients.) The people who did my recommendations were warm and eager to help me. Wow, the power of social networking at play right in front of my own eyes.

The next thing I did was to post a question in the “Question and Answer” section on LinkedIn. I asked what type of social media people were using, was it generating sales, and did they consider social networking a “time pit”. (Oh, I was woefully ignorant then!). In less than 30 minutes again, I had 12 excellent responses; thoughtful in nature and addressed to me personally. Many of the responses to my question were from top executives at companies like Boeing or from film makers or professional social networking consultants. I really benefited from the group insight and comments returned from my “loaded question”.

After that I decided that maybe I should interact too in the “Question and Answer” section and went on to review and then answer 9 questions. All comments and results were posted to my LinkedIn profile as well. My responses allow others to review my insight, candor, and point of view, kind of like a snap shot of my personality and expertise.

The next day, after now having doubled my connections to over 30 or so, I decided that I should really “get serious”. I loaded my e-newsletter subscriber list of over 1,000 names and sent a custom greeting and explanation of who I was, how I had their email address, and sent out the invitation to connect with me on LinkedIn using email within the LinkedIn control panel.

In under 12 hours from my large list invitation my LinkedIn network contained over 90 connections. Less than one week later I am at 140 connections and still growing. In the first 24 hours, I also picked up a possibility for a new speaking engagement in front of 60 local area public relations professionals and a potential new subcontracting partner project for search optimization, ghost blogging, and Google AdWords management. All this with a wee bit of time investment.

This is the bottom line of what I have found from my own personal experience with social networking and LinkedIn. People crave, no, they thirst for personal interaction. People want to connect with you and want to share their knowledge and themselves!

Here Are Some of My Tips and the Lessons I Have Learned

One – You should not be focused on selling all the time in using LinkedIn. The value of your expertise and open sharing of resources and ideas is well worth the time investment alone. Being able to tap others for references or to recommend someone you know to a connection has incredible value and is super easy to do. Reviewing new connections’ profiles and then their network can give you opportunities to join new conversation groups and to connect with people with common interests in your industry. To do this, you can either introduce yourself to a new connection directly (if they have that option enabled) or ask your common connection to introduce you. You get five free introductions with your LinkedIn account set up. After that, you can buy more.

Two – Responding to “Questions and Answers” can help to educate you and to share your knowledge with others. Each time you answer a question the information is posted to your profile allowing others to see your insight and style.

Three – Asking for a recommendation is easy and painless. You can even ask for a revision gracefully, if you do not like what someone has said and you have the option to post the recommendation or not in your profile. If you decide to use the recommendation off the LinkedIn site best business practices recommend that you ask the author for approval. What a great way to build your authority for your services and products in an easy, unthreatening, and painless way.

Four – Have fun and invest 15 minutes each day to add new connections either from new prospects you have had the previous business day or by reviewing connections of your connections and looking for common ground to connect with new people.

Five – When a prospect contacts you by email through your website, make sure to not only add their email to your e-newsletter subscriber list, but invite them to connect with you online with LinkedIn or Facebook. Make sure you have noted in your privacy policy on your website what you will do before you do this to prevent a problem. Although you may not create a sale, by adding the individual to your network, you retain a way to easily share information back and forth and keep connections up-to-date with new services offerings, promotions, new white papers, and other things that bring value to your relationship that may lead to a possible future sale or recommendation.

My Conclusion

What has surprised me from all of this was the friendliness, speed of response, and overall positive attitude from others eager to connect with me. Truly people are starving to connect and share with others. It just takes you to make the first step to reach out to them. By doing so, you build your network, your credibility, and enhance your LinkedIn profile allowing connections to view your “resume” and interact with you and even approach you for a business.

On my end, I have already recommended one previous client to a connection who was looking for a branding expert, and written one recommendation for another. So referrals and recommendations work both ways benefiting your connections from your relationships with others.

You can also send out notes to your connections and post news updates. In fact, I notified my connections that I was publishing this newsletter to share my experience and to encourage connections to subscribe to my monthly e-newsletter list.

There Are Options to LinkedIn – Facebook Is an Excellent Application!

Now one note about Facebook, although I am speaking solely about LinkedIn in this article, I do use and like Facebook. One of the big differences between LinkedIn and Facebook is the ability to add applications like Google Lively, YouTube videos, Grow a Plant, and Flairs to your profile. These are very cool interactive widgets that are easy to add, and add color to your profile, and interest to your profile page, and allow you to interact with “friends” in a fun way.

Additionally, I like that you can instant message other connections directly from Facebook by clicking the icon in the bottom right of the page. There are more cool interactive features on Facebook from my point of view than for LinkedIn, but I find LinkedIn simpler to use on a daily basis.

Which social networking system you use is really best based on where your colleagues and clients have migrated. Which ever one you choose, make a small time investment to reap big benefits. I think that you will find out just like I did your relationships with clients, prospects, and other people will be richer for their use.

Ready to Try Out Some of These Social Networking Sites Yourself?

If you are ready to try out social networking, it is easy. Just visit LinkedIn or Facebook to set up a free account and get rolling. You can send me an email invitation as I would be glad to be your first connection for Facebook at nmccord56@msn.com or to nancy@mccordweb.com for LinkedIn. I’ll look forward to meeting and sharing with you online at either LinkedIn or Facebook.

This past week Google announced that its search results would be instantaneous. Meaning specifically that indexing the web every week or every month just had to go! They have to spider the web continuously to provide up the second results.

Sounds like Google is feeling the pinch with the popularity of Twitter news sharing and Facebook interaction to me. With instant news being found out on Twitter and shared, who has to go to Google News anymore. Remember when Michael Jackson died? I found out on Twitter before any of the news networks had picked up the story. That really must have made ole Google feel out of the loop.

In the past weeks Google has signed non-exclusive agreements with Twitter and Facebook to use their instantaneous news to update their own index hoping that it can woo back immediate news and information junkies from Twitter Search and Facebook updates. Although this doesn’t sound like a problem, Google must be scared with the increasing popularity of Facebook and migration of regular email users to solely Facebook mail users as this will hurt them in their pocketbook for sponsored advertising.

For Twitter users this new Google thrust is a boon. Your tweets may very well be the hot property and viral message that now gets incredibly huge exposure and bonus staying power by being included into the Google index.

Based on this information if you are not on Twitter, you’d really better be considering getting started. This mash-up of Twitter, Facebook, and Google is bound to be a huge boon for website and businesses who dare to really take advantage of it.

If you need help with implementing Twitter check out our Twitter services to help you get started.

Guys, thanks for serving and doing all you do!

IE 8 has a cool new feature that some websites can and should use, it is called a web slice. In essence this is a small section of your page that you update either manually or dynamically with a script shows content that a reader can subscribe to. With this snippet subscribers can see any new entries you add in their browser when you add them.

Here is an example on one of my own pages: http://www.mccordweb.com/web-design/web-design-templates.php. On the right of the content you will see a gray box that says MWS New Templates. If you mouse over this box and have IE 8, a green icon will show to the top left of the content. Additionally take a quick look in the browser bar and you will see a new green web slice icon has also been illuminated. If you mouse over the slice box in the content you can choose to subscribe to this snippet. IE will place a link to this snippet over the tabs section.

Once you have subscribed, anytime I change this section, add a new link, a new photo, etc. your browser link will show the new updated content. You can view the content on demand. If you even want to remove this code snippet. Just right click the item above the tabs and select delete.

I have to say I spent a few hours learning how to set up  and style the snippet to make it look good. Here is a great tutorial on how to make the code that I used at CODE Magazine. The code is pretty straight forward. What took time was to figure out how to style the snippet that showed in IE. I found the first div tag controls the font color, size, and back ground. If you do not style this first div tag IE will pick up your own website body tag background and coloring which in some cases can be a problem. Testing and tweaking to style it properly may take a bit of time using trial and error, but once you get it, you will be able to quickly add the same syntax to other pages or web slices.

How would a website use web slices? Well the possibilities are endless. Some sites may choose to show current coupon codes, showcase  new features, highlight new products, introduce specials or other timely information. You don’t need to programmatically insert information. I am not a programmer and once your shell is styled and set up to your liking you can embed this on any page and just change the content using regular HTML.

So take a look at my web slice page, subscribe, and see what you think.

I get asked a lot for help in regards to what a new business startup should do to develop a web presence and what provides the biggest return for investment. To help answer this question as concisely as possible, without you having to pay me a consulting fee, I have tried to share my insights in this blog post.

1. Purchase a great content-rich professionally designed website

I have to say if you do not have a great website, and I am not talking about one your kid sister made, or one created using a GoDaddy template, then you will not be able to convey the professionalism that you need to convey to create confidence in yourself or your products to potential customers. Many startups come to me asking why they do not generate sales and when I look at their website it appears that they are operating on a shoe string. The Web is a great equalizer. Your business startup website can make your business appear to be large, established, and successful if it reflects true professionalism in content and in design. This is one of the most critical expenses that any new business startup should invest in. You may choose to work with our firm for a custom website or a Quick Launch website or select another web design firm, but you must have a good-looking professional appearing web presence.

2. Get involved immediately with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter

You’ve got to get the word out about yourself once you have a website. By updating your status and posting information, sharing and interacting online at a minimum of three times a day on these various sites you start to build an online presence, get authority links to point to your new website and inside content, and start to establish yourself as a contender in your industry. I have reviewed many social networking sites and these are the ones where I invest my own time (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). I recommend in some cases setting up accounts under your own name as the business owner. I do not have one profile for business and one for pleasure. Small businesses need to just get involved with social networking and typically some of your very first customers will be friends, family, and social contacts.

If you take the attitude that social networking is a time pit and worthless, you will be woefully wrong and out of the loop. In fact the more you involve yourself in these endeavors with the attitude that you are sharing and providing information and not looking particularly to sell, the more fun you will have and the more fruitful the connections will become.

I have closed sales from social networking contacts. It does happen, really. But if you watch any of the networking I do myself you will see that I am open, sharing, providing information on a wide variety of topics and soft selling my own services only occasionally. I do not use social networking as a brochure or lead generation opportunity, but yet it has worked to bring me business over time.

3. Get started on Google AdWords

If you have the budget you really want your very next step to be advertising your products and services on Google AdWords. Don’t waste money at this point on Yahoo, MSN adCenter, Yoddle or other pay per click enterprises. Concentrate on AdWords. If you cannot afford a professional account manager such as myself, then get started using the simple to use Google AdWords Starter version. If you are advertising your services to a national audience be prepared to spend anywhere from about $1.25 to $3.50 or so per click (some businesses will pay much more). Don’t go into this expecting to pay $.05 per click and set $150 per 30 days as your monthly budget. Allocate $500 to $800 for the first 30 days of clicks and set your maximum click cost to a “market reasonable” setting. Make sure you set up special landing pages for your ad group themes and have conversion tracking installed. Review your program often to make sure that your money is working for you and is an investment in the future not an expense.

4. Build great content on your website under your domain name using a blog

Now we’re moving into maintenance mode on your website. You must be adding to and growing your web presence over time to attract search engine robots, improve your placement organically, and to provide opportunities for readers to connect with you. There is no better way to do this than using a blog. Blogs build website traffic, allow for keyword dense topics to be discussed and housed under your domain name, and build “web authority” for your site over time. It is not necessary for you to have a professional blogger write for you. Although we offer this service, there is no replacement for your insights as the business owner, but you must be a consistent writer however and provide interesting on-topic information and resources in your blog posts.

5. Focus on customer service in all you do

I have found when I first started out that it was easy to do the work, but hard to find someone to pay for it. Here is where top notch customer focused customer service is key for a new business startup. You must provide free information and help initially to prospects, then move them to a paying customer status, and then finally  make sure that you do everything possible to satisfy them. My own business started out solely as a word of mouth referral service and now earns a six figure income. When you build your base on happy customers, rewarding referrals, and provide real advise and value to customers, your business will grow.

If you have other recommendations for a business startup, just leave your comments to this post below. I’d love to see what you think is important.

If you feel that you need a more personalized plan and review of your own business’ current statistical information we do provide consulting services for $90 per hour.  Much of the information on what you can do and how to do it however is provided as free content on our website and blog, so we invite you to dig deeper and browse our content. You’re sure to find a wealth of information in both locations.

You can sign up for early access to Google Wave here.  What is Google Wave? Well to me, it looks like Twitter-Google.com-AOL IM-Flkr-Facebook all rolled into one interface. You can read what Google says about it and see screen shots on the Google website for the application.

To me it looks like the next generation of social networking and team collaboration using many of the same applications that we use separately right now. I am thinking that Google should call it Gitter or maybe GFace, or how about Instant G. But no-o-o-o, they have named it Google Wave.

Well I will be riding the crest of the “Wave” when it is released and will keep you posted about this revolutionary new web application that will be out later this year.

The application is being created in part by the same team that has been responsible for Google Maps. With Google Friend Connect, Google is really looking to break into the social networking phenomena and now with Google Chrome in place Google Wave may just be the application that will be positioned to be the tidal wave that will crash the competition in the social networking field.

Don’t flame me on this, this program is not for everyone, but for the super busy executive who wants to use Twitter and wants to outsource it, this is the perfect service.

We are now providing Twitter Executive services. What this means is if you want to jump start your Twitter account, get set up, initial followers, website and other social media integration (where allowed), personalized training, research of sites to glean interesting content from, training on how to use TweetDeck and the first week of great Twitter posts, this is for you.

For executives who totally want to farm out Twittering (okay I know it is tweets here, but the “money keywords” are twittering), we will do it. We will be very selective over what we take on, but we provide the option for executives who want to pay for premium services.

Twitter is a great platform. I really like it and think that it is fun. It provides a neat way to “go viral” by interacting with others. I’ve had wonderful success with Twitter recently in promoting one of my own mini-white papers, Twitter Demystified for Business Users. So if you are ready to take on Twitter you may just want to give this  new Twitter program your consideration.

Many of our clients are doing blogging for search engine optimization benefits. So what exactly should you do if you are blogging for search engines?

1. Make sure you have great well-written interesting content.
2. Make sure you are using WordPress on your own domain and website server.
3. Install the WordPress All in One SEO plug-in and configure it.
4. Write only on topics that are your core businesses and keep posts keyword dense.
5. Use great post titles that contain your important keywords.

These are just a few things that you should keep in mind as you blog. There are more tips and tricks what do you recommend for best practices?

Just one more from me, try to deep link to your content from your blog post at least once and two to three times depending on the length of the blog is better.

This blog post from the Microsoft adCenter blog says it best – web hits are nonsense when it comes to measuring web traffic.

Some website owners are still hung up on the big numbers that web hits convey, but in reality a hit is simply the number of images, files, and component items that a single page contains and not a measure of a real person visiting your website. One page can create hundreds of hits in your statistical results if it contains a lot of graphics as the browser downloads the components.

A much better measure of real success is to measure not page views, but unique visitors. Google Analytics and Urchin Web Site Statistics provide these important statistics. By measuring the number of unique visitors you can get a real view of how popular your website really is. Sure the number will be way less than hits but it will be an accurate measurement. On top of that measuring unique visitors is a web standard and one that professional webmasters talk about, dissect, and try to improve.

So don’t think that by saying you got 1 million hits on your website that it means anything, it simply shows unfortunately, your own ignorance of what is really important when it comes to measuring success on the Web.

I started out on Twitter a month of two ago and initially loved the interface, the interaction, and reading mundane information posted by others. Now I am looking at Twitter with a different perspective after having used it for a while.

I think if you have a community of close associates Twitter would be great like instant messaging on the fly, but if you don’t, Twitter is now all about marketing, self-promotion, and advertising. If you look at any mature Twitter site, it is chock full of links to eBooks, to people’s blogs, or how to buy their new T-Shirt. In fact it has gotten so bad now, that mainly I use Twitter to post my blog feed and occasionally monitor it for information.

Twitter is mutating as people figure out how to use it and integrate it into their lives. I do still feel that it’s a fine tool for a network of colleagues or close friends, but for me I am seeing it as a marketing vehicle and I’m not sure I want to read other people’s advertising messages in the rare free time that I have.

I’m sure that the makers of Twitter did not intend for the application to become an ad vehicle, but take a look at my Twitter friends posts and that’s all you see. http://twitter.com/mccordweb

If whitepapers are not for you as mentioned in our previous post then feature articles or linkbait articles may be the best option for you. With these types of articles, you can easily pay a good web content writer to create a 600 to 800 word article for you on topics that dovetail with the services you provide.

Once created, you can register the articles with a variety of article directories for syndication on other websites, in ezines, or on other blogs. The articles will provide a one-way inbound link back to your website and will appear in Google on the article directory site.

For some clients, we recommend the additional installation of an article directory back on their website as a repository for this created content. If your blogger has written these articles, the research and topics will provide additional content creation opportunities. Additionally these articles can be pointed to by links from within your own website and blog either at the article directory or in your online article repository.

By cross linking all you do with specially created content, you help to point search engines to the content that builds your own authority.

Personally I have found that Google does not really factor in the one way inbound links that you get from article directories to improve your organic position with this technique, but Yahoo and MSN will move you up on the search results page with feature articles registered at the various article directories.

Now the very pointed question, if doing articles, which can be costly, doesn’t help you with Google placement why do them, you should do them to create authority for your website. This is one reason why we recommend an article repository back on your own website; so you build credibility in your readers’ eyes as well as for search engines. We know that articles of this nature do not give you an important immediate organic boost, but much of what builds authority and organic placement is not about immediate results but long-term results for readers PLUS search engines.

Check out this funny YouTube video. If you have ever called tech support on online sales you will really get a chuckle out of this one.

Candid is right, you may want to click the post title to go to my rather lengthy and acid review on social media at Web-World Watch. You may agree or rabidly disagree, but let the discussion begin!

Is social media worth the time effort? Are you simply being spammed by people in your network? Are you really getting new clients from this avenue? What is the benefit from simply ranking high organically on your name and not on keywords? These are just a few very pointed questions that I look at. So click in and let me know your thoughts – is social media working for you and how?