Here is a writing tip:  Don’t rely on your cell phone in an emergency. Write down phone numbers and carry them with you.

I was in a car accident two weeks ago. Crunchy, smashy 6-car pile up on 101-south bound near SFO.  It was just like in the movies—tires squealing, horns blaring, horrible metal-on-metal bang and clang—except that, unlike the movies, I was actually in one of the cars.

After the thudding and praying stopped, and my traveling companion and I realized neither of us were badly hurt, we reached for our phones.  When I called another friend to come help us, …

It can be difficult to get a new blog off the ground.  A recent IBM report announced that 80% of the blogs they host never made it past the 5th post.  Other blogs, especially business blogs, often start with a flurry of activity only to peter off after a month or two.

If you want to keep your online presence from becoming one of these social media casualties, you need plan out how you will keep your blog alive.

Build Blogging into Your Calendar

When it comes to scheduling, you need to treat your blog just like you would any other formal project.  …

At a marketing workshop I attended recently, the subject of web sites naturally came up. One attendee was feeling the pressure to create a web site for his insurance business. Although he knew he “ought” to have one, he was obviously reluctant (indeed, suspicious) about the need, the cost and the benefit.

His reasons for not getting a site boiled down to:

Today, I’m going to examine reason #1. I’ll address reason #2 next week.  So let’s …

Time to freshen up your web site? I’ve just finished updating mine! I’m delighted with the new and improved Blue Ribbon Writing.Com but-whew!-getting it done was a challenge. Oh, MB/I did a sterling job on the design and production. My challenge was with the content. And I was the writer.

I write Web site content professionally but preparing my own was an eye-opening experience. Now that I’ve been my own customer, I offer you three pieces of advice as you work on your site:

Know Thyself. If you are planning to write your site content yourself, please sit in front of …

Websites are tools, and the tools that endure are the tools that serve a purpose.  Shovels are good at making holes, cars are good at moving people from one place to another.  If you want people to use your website, it must serve a purpose.  However, it is not sufficient for the site to serve a purpose for you, it must serve a purpose for whomever you want to use it.

What Purpose Should Your Website Serve?
And Whom Does it Serve?

There are any number of purposes a website might serve, but let’s take a look at some of the more common …

Redesigning a website is like building a new one:

Start with a purpose.

If you know you need a change, but can’t put the reason into words, try answering these questions:

“What do I want my new website to do that the old one couldn’t?”

“What do I want my new website to do better than my old website?”

Maybe you want your new site to reflect a new identity, perhaps you want to start selling products online, or you want to start an online community, or improve online customer communication, or reduce the turn around time between when you decide …

As I mentioned last time, I’m updating my web site. And, as I mentioned last time, it’s slow going.

For those of us with existing web sites, it can be tough to find time to update it. It’s there; it exists. With other demands on our time and energy, we put effort into things that are urgent. That’s perhaps not a wise …

Last month marked the 20th Anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. Awareness of this landmark date was a part of my inspiration to write my blog entry on using vacations and sick leave as a small business stress test.

At that time I suggested that business owners make contingency plans and run drills for all variety of business obstacles, including the possibility of bridge closures. Last week the Labor Day repairs of the Bay Bridge failed and we were faced with the longest closure of that thoroughfare since the Loma Prieta quake.

For five days …

Excuse me.  I couldn’t help noticing that strange and interesting plant.

• Little Shop of Horrors

Unfortunately, we do not all work at Mushnik’s Skid Row Florists.

Putting a strange and interesting plant in your window (or on your website) will not drive web traffic all on its own.

If nobody passes your window, then no one can see what’s there, nor can they tell their friends and acquaintances.

What you need is an integrated strategy that both uses your website as an asset and uses your other assets to draw attention to your website.  Here are some things to consider before working on your strategy:

• Do …
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LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… once only visited for personal use, these sites are now being used for business purposes. We all hear about them and see their icons everywhere. And, we feel out of touch or like we are dropping the ball if we don’t have profiles on all of them.

It is true that social media sites help business. But how? Most of the case studies we read about are about big business and their bigger than life social media campaigns. How can small business benefit?

The truth is—at least our opinion of it—that there are no step-by-step rules to follow …