Step II: Time to start mapping

You own your dream domain! Don’t leave the domain provider site yet. Here is how to change the Nameservers in name.com.

Click on the cute “Account” man button at the top of the page:

You’ll arrive at a page like this:

Click on the info button of the domain you want to map to. You’ll get a pop up page and on the right it says Nameservers with a list under it.

To the right of Nameservers it says “edit.” Click on that button.

Insert the code from wordpress.com:

NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
NS3.WORDPRESS.COM

And remove the code that was there before.

Click Update and now lets move into the wordpress.com site.

Step III: Make changes in wordpress.

Make sure you’re logged into wordpress.com. Also make sure you’re in the the dashboard of the correct blog!!!

In the dashboard of the blog, along the left run a bunch of buttons. At the bottom is Settings and inside Settings is Domains. Click on that.

You’ll be prompted to add a domain. Write in the one you just purchased:

After you click Add domain to blog, you’ll be prompted to purchase the credits needed to pay for the mapping. Once you finish with that purchase, go back to Settings –> Domains. Click on the new domain which you want to act as your primary domain.

Step IV: Check out your new domain!

Go to the new address of your site, make sure it works, feel very proud and then tell the world!

Good job!

Related posts:

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For more information about costs, venue, topics, etc., please contact us at (02) 5660297 or via email at info@illuminea.com.

Agenda

Sept. 23: What exactly is social media, and how do I use it effectively?

Part 1: What is social media marketing? (1 hour)

• What makes something social? What is Web 2.0? We’ll look at the most important elements of social media today: RSS, Video, Widgets, Tagging, and more to get everyone on the same page.
• The importance of social media in your marketing activity
• Case studies: companies and organizations that have successfully and unsuccessfully used social media

Part 2: Planning effective strategies for social media activity (3 hours)

• Elements of an effective social media strategy
• Setting goals
• Important considerations before starting
• Research your space
• Implementation
• Monitoring & engaging – how, what
• DO NOT neglect the other “boring” stuff: SEO, email, advertising, etc.

Sept. 30: Practical techniques for implementing your social media strategy

Part 1: Overview of important social networks – what they are, how to best use them for marketing (3 hours)

• How to use twitter for marketing: setting up profiles that work for business, building up community, promoting your profile, what and how to write, monitoring, measuring, the best tools, etc.
• Using facebook for business: profiles, Pages, applications, events, etc.: critical differences between each of them, how to choose the right ones for your purposes, setting up a facebook presence that works for marketing and promotion.
• YouTube and other video sites: why video is the next generation of web marketing, what to keep in mind when working with video, ideal length and content, how to promote your video to achieve your marketing goals
• Blogs – “old fashioned” but crucial: blogs are the hubs of an effective social media presence. What to keep in mind, how to set it up, how to integrate it with your other social media activity, ideal frequency for updates, what to write, how to write, how to promote.

Part 2: Personal branding (1 hour)

• What is personal branding?
• Why everyone should work on their online personal brand today
• How to create a successful personal brand with social media

Summing up: Where to go from here (0.5 hours)

• Key points to keep in mind when branching out into social media
• Putting it all together
• Working with (skeptical) upper management

About the speaker – me, Miriam Schwab

Miriam is the Friendly CEO of illuminea, and has been speaking and teaching about social media and blogging for business for over two years.

illuminea is a marketing firm dedicated to helping businesses and organizations use the social web effectively as an integrated part of their marketing mix. illuminea has extensive expertise in designing, developing and strategizing business blogs, and using these blogs as the hub for launching successful social media marketing activities. Part of illuminea’s day-to-day activities involve keeping up with the latest developments in the social web so that we are always able to offer our clients the best solutions for their needs.

Among illuminea’s clients are some of Israel’s leading companies and personalities, including Comverse, Commtouch, Natan Sharansky, and more. Click here to view testimonials from illuminea’s clients.

Here is a list of the conferences and events that Miriam has spoken at:

Wordcamp 2007 – moderator http://english.wordcamp-israel.info/ and the schedule

WordCamp 2008

Elephant

Techshoret 2007

Affilicon 2008

Affilicon 2009

Marchshoret, Nov. 2, 2008. Presentation is here

Partnership 2000, Nov. 12, 2008

Pradler Institute

SSVN, hosted by IBM on July 8, 2009. Read reviews. Presentation.

ISOC Israel:How to create a personal brand by using online tools- MP3 of lecture; presentation; article on The Com (Hebrew).

MEET Alumni Conference, August 4-5, 2009 Istanbul Turkey: “Blogging Secrets: Tips for marketing your business online.”

For more information about costs, venue, topics, etc., please contact us at (02) 5660297 or via email at info@illuminea.com. Hope to see you there!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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See results number 3 and 4? That’s us. Where’s PayPal or PayPal Israel? Nowhere to be seen.

Ranking high for this term was an accident for us. We happen to have published two blog posts on the subject of using PayPal in Israel over the past year, and as you can see the web is not exactly saturated with good content on this topic, so it was an easy score.

The funny thing is that as a result, people have begun to perceive illuminea as PayPal Israel experts. We get at least one phone call and/or email from people with questions about using PayPal in Israel about once a week.

PayPal Israel is missing an opportunity

Although PayPal officially serves the Israeli community, the amount of information available online about using PayPal in Israel is meager at best and confusing at worst, and the amount of people with questions is huge as is evidenced by the number of them contacting us with their PayPal questions.

I must give credit to Nissim Ohayon, Sr. Business Development Manager at PayPal Israel, who wrote a post on our blog about using PayPal in Israel, and even took the time to answer the many questions posed by readers in the comments.

However – maybe this is a sign that PayPal and/or PayPal Israel needs its own blog? PayPal should be engaging in the conversation, providing solid and timely information. I suspect that PayPal could win quite a lot of Israeli clients if it provided a minimum standard of online customer support.

Twitter’s great, but it can never take the place of the blog

This accidental positioning of our company as experts in the field of PayPal use in Israel demonstrates the strength and importance of blogging.

Twitter is all the rage these days, and people have even questioned whether twitter will take the place of the blog. The truth is, many people, myself included, are blogging less because they are spending more time on twitter. However, with all the value that twitter provides let nobody tell you that it can replace the power of blogging.

A blog allows you to present an idea and follow through on it. You cannot do that in 140 characters. (Can you imagine this post as a tweet? Let’s try: “illuminea appears #3 & 4 in Google SERPS for term PayPal Israel thanks 2 our blog. PayPal not even on 1st page. Lesson: keep blogging”. Not too bad!) In addition, it offers loads of content for search engines to index and present to users in their results. Yes, tweets do appear in search results but less than blog posts, and also with a strange sort of randomness.

Also, a blog gives you your own place on the web. The content you create on facebook or twitter helps prop up those networks. The content you create on your blog helps prop up your own place on the web.

So don’t bury blogging yet. It’s still the foundation of any online marketing activity you undertake, whether it’s SEO, PPC, email, or social media. It’s on your blog that you have a chance to convert users in whatever way you hope to do so.

In the meantime, we’re happy to answer your PayPal questions as best as we can so don’t let this post stop you from contacting us! And keep blogging!

Our previous posts about using PayPal in Israel:

• Everything you wanted to know about paypal and the Israeli Shekel
• How paypal really works for Israelis and shekels

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Why?

In the past, creating a personal brand was solely the domain of celebrities. However, today everyone can create their own “brand,” thanks to the proliferation of online networks where one can create a branded profile, and blogs which allow owners to present their knowledge in a useful and accessible manner.

Aside from being good for one’s ego, why would people want to create their own personal brand? The reason is that it can give you a serious edge in today’s competitive business world, whether you want to secure the future of your career or promote your business. By creating quality focused content on your own blog, which you then promote via the social networks like facebook and twitter in order to increase your reach, you can position yourself as an expert in your field and even build up a community around your knowledge.

How?

There are a number of factors involved in creating a personal brand online, but they generally boil down to the following:

• Authenticity – Be yourself. Many people think that their personality is not great, and therefore they try to fake it both online and offline. Don’t. Your personality is what makes you unique and plays an important role in your UPS (Unique Selling Point). Embrace it, don’t fight it. Plus, it’s hard to keep up a facade of a personality that isn’t really you over the long-term, and people will pick up that something’s not quite right.
• Consistent look and feel - carefully select the image you will use to represent yourself online; use consistent colors, fonts etc.
• Quality content - create quality content on your blog about the topic you have chosen to focus on. Set up your facebook and twitter profile to automatically publish links to your content on your blog.
• Building up a relevant community – find and friend/follow others who share similar interests and/or could be good leads for your business.
• Continue your brand offline – make sure your offline activity, personality, and even appearance are in sync with your online brand, and vice versa. We all love the web, however nothing can ever replace the importance and impact of face-to-face meetings, so plan to spread your personal brand offline as well.

Rinse and repeat.

The presentation is below. Note that it’s mostly in Hebrew. Let me know what you think in the comments.

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Here are the seven tips. For more info about the Tel Aviv Writer’s Cafe, please scroll to the end of this post.

1. Brand yourself as if you were a brand name

If you are trying to market yourself as a freelance writer, or freelance anything, it’s important to start to look at yourself as the product that you, the business owner, is trying to sell. Yeah, that’s a lot of hats to wear, and that doesn’t include the fact that you, the freelancer, are also the accountant, administrator, and coffee-fetcher. Anyways, in order to accomplish this, you need to create “Brand You.”

Why should I brand myself?

The brilliant Gary Vaynerchuk has the answer for you (bonus: guess who’s apparently a MOT (Member of the Tribe)…note how he says Alav Hashalom about Paul Newman passing away!):

Another reason you want to do this is because Google has a long memory, and you need to control what prospective employers and others see about you on the web. You have a chance at doing this if you have a personal site built on your own domain. To see what I’m talking about, read this post from Lifehacker: Geek to Live: Have a say in what Google says about you.

So how do I do this?

At the very least, buy your name domain name now (we recommend using www.name.com – and we have no affiliation with them, they just don’t suck like some other registrars we won’t name). If you’re name is Joe Shmoe, buy www.joeshmoe.com. If that domain name is taken, add your middle initial and buy www.joezshmoe.com. If you don’t have a middle name, pretend you do and choose a middle initial to use from this point forwards in all your professional correspondence so that people will Google your name that way and actually find you. If you think it’s weird to add a fake middle initial, ask Michael J. Fox, if he regrets it. (To see why he didn’t just use “A,” the initial of his real middle name, read about his Early Life in Wikipedia. Hint – it may have to do with the fact that he’s Canadian, eh?)

If you’re not up to it, you don’t have to actually do anything with your shiny new domain name right now. So why are you buying your domain name now if you’re not going to use it? Because it can get snatched up between now and when you do want to use it by someone else, which would suck for you.

If you are up to it, I strongly recommend starting a blog that appears under your name-domain name.

But I don’t have thousands to spend on that kind of thing right now!

That’s alright, I say. Here are instructions on starting a personalized blog on a shoestring. The reason this method is good is because if your blog becomes a real success and needs to grow, you can relatively easily move over to your own self-hosted WordPress blog, like all the pros.

Starting a Personalized Blog on a Shoestring:

1. Sign up for a blog on WordPress.com. Try to choose a  name that represents you, but remember that you will be putting your new name-domain on your blog in a few steps.
2. Choose a WordPress theme that best suits your needs. You can find them under Appearance > Themes in the sidebar of your new blog’s admin section. I recommend choosing a pretty plain theme with a header area that allows you to upload your own personalized image. My sister Deena has done a good job with that on her blog, which runs on WordPress.com and you can see here: http://deenascreations.com.
3. You should go through all the other settings and choose what best suits you. To do this, go to Settings, and go through the sub-pages and modify as you see fit.
4. Map your domain name onto your new blog. First, you need to change your DNS settings for your domain name. DNS tells your domain where it should be point to, i.e. where the site that will be using this domain is sitting. First, log into your account on your domain registrar. Try to find where the DNS info is managed. It may be under Manage Domains or Manage DNS, depending on your registrar. When you do find where you manage the DNS, remove any existing nameservers and add the following:
   • NS1.WORDPRESS.COM
   • NS2.WORDPRESS.COM
   • NS3.WORDPRESS.COM
5. Now, go back to your site and click on Upgrades, and then click on the Domains tab.
   
6. Then, enter your domain name in the Add a Domain field:
   
7. At that point it should ask you to buy 10 credits in order to use your own custom domain on WordPress.com. This costs $10 per year.
8. Once it’s set up, create an About and Contact page (crucial), and start blogging your head off.

Here are some examples of people who have really succeeded in creating a brand around themselves:

Chris Brogan

Seth Godin – yes, I know his domain name isn’t www.sethgodin.com, but he’s Seth Godin for goodness sake! He can get away with it. When you reach his stature, you can too.

Suze Orman

Gary Vaynerchuk

Here are some resources on creating a personal brand:

By Dan Schawbel – who has succeeded in branding himself as a personal branding expert

Gain a Competitive Edge by Establishing a Personal Brand

10 Ways Personal Branding Can Save You From Getting Fired

By Brian Solis

Facebook is the Hub for Your Personal Brand

Oh, and more Gary Vaynerchuk just cuz he’s so awesome, inspiring and in your face (and did I mention he’s an MOT? What naches.)

2. Don’t forget about social media

Since blogs run on RSS feeds, it means you can promote your blog content elsewhere. This is good because it increases the likelihood that people will come across your content, which is the most important thing here. You can set up your facebook and twitter profiles to automatically pull in your blog content, and post it for all your network friends to see.

In order to do any of this automatic republishing, you need to know where your feed is. On WordPress.com, it’s at http://myblog.wordpress.com/feed, where myblog is your WordPress.com blog name, or at http://myblog.com/feed, if you’ve mapped your own domain on to your WordPress.com blog.

To learn how to automatically post your blog posts on facebook, read Publish your Blog’s Feed to Facebook.

To automatically post to twitter, first create a user account on twitter. Then, go to EasyTweets, sign up, and add your twitter account to your profile. Then, click on the RSS icon at the right-hand side of your dashboard:

Enter the feed URL (see above for info on how to find it), entry frequency that EasyTweets will check for new posts (every hour is fine), any text to add before each tweet (I don’t recommend adding any text because then it looks automated), and whether you want to post the current new item in your feed, or only start updating from new items. Press Add RSS Feed, and you’re done.

One thing that came up during our session, and often comes up, is people’s confusion as to what usefulness twitter provides. Here are some links that may help you better understand why all these people get to excited about twitter:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Twitterers: Kris Colvin

How to Attract and Influence People on Twitter — The Ultimate Twitter Resource – this is like a how-to book for twitter

Twitter Enlightenment for Business Owners

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

3. Get people to stay in touch with you via RSS feeds and email subscriptions

If someone comes to your site, you want to get them to subscribe in some way to stay in touch before they leave. If you do, you can start to create a long-term connection where they consistently receive content you create, and trust grows between you. If you don’t, chances are they’ll leave, forget that you exist, and never come back.

So, make sure to prominently display the options for subscribing. Here’s a screenshot from Natan Sharansky’s new site for an example on how to do this – note how the subscription info appears very close to the top of every page:

4. Focus – so that people know what they’re getting

People subscribe to certain content because they are interested in the general topic being covered. Imagine if you were an avid car fan, and you bought Cars magazine only to find a spread about the latest hairstyles (or whatever they write about in fashion magazines). And imagine if you were an avid fashion fan and you opened the latest edition of Elle only to find a spread about axel grease (or whatever they write about in car magazines). You’d be pretty disappointed because you are paying to read those magazines because of their focus.

Same with your blog: people subscribe to it because you are writing about something they are interested in, whether it be politics, celebrities, iPhones, or cats. So stick to that 99% of the time, and your readers will stick with you.

5. Optimize for search engines

Yes, even you can optimize your blog for search engines. SEO may be perceived as a magical talent only bestowed upon special fairy beings, but there are some basic things you can do to help your blog rank better in the search engines. Here is a quick rundown:

1. Make a quick list of keywords you think people are using to find people like you. You can use all sorts of fancy keyword tools if you want, but you can also just use your brain since you know your industry. Take this list, and write it down on a piece of paper. Make a note of which terms are the most targeted, and which are less focused. You have more of a chance of ranking high for “Jerusalem car fans” than for “car fans.” You see what I mean? So while you’d probably like to rank high for car fans, it’s best to aim for Jerusalem car fans. But even so, don’t lose sight of the big vision of ranking for “car fans” because you may get there.
2. Once you’ve got your keywords, make sure to use them whenever possible in your blog titles, and in your first paragraph. However, when in doubt, make sure you are ultimately writing for humans. What I mean is, don’t stuff your title and paragraph with keywords that don’t make sense, because while you may make Google happy, you won’t make people happy, and that’s not good.
3. Tag your posts with tags related to your keywords, but also to other stuff you mention so that you may rank for those words as well.
4. Pay attention to meta keywords and particularly to your meta description, because that’s what appears under the title of your post in the Google search results.
5. Link internally. When you mention an event, term or phrase that you’ve mentioned before, link to that other post, or category if it exists on your blog.

6. Promote offsite

Aside from trying to get traffic via the web, make sure to promote your blog in other places as well, like in your email signature and on your business cards. And tell people about it whenever relevant, without being annoying.

7. Track your success

Like anything in life, if you are trying to achieve something in life, you need to track if you are getting there. As the saying goes “if you can measure it, you can manage it.” So track your site stats and feed stats. Don’t worry about seeing huge leaps in growth, but you do want to make sure there is a steady incline at the very least. You don’t want to plateau or start to shrink – that’s bad news, and if you see that you need to work to reverse it, generally by creating more content, and commenting on more blogs.

8. Bonus – accessing the awesomeness that is called humanity

“But you said 7 tips,” you say.

That’s right, I say, but I added a bonus. The bonus is about all the people you get to connect with via your blog and online activity, particularly when those people are…extraordinary (in every sense of the word).

Recently I got the following comment on this blog, and it makes it all worth it. Note the author’s name:

Author : moshe rabeynu
Comment:
I am a former male exotic dancer and am interested in establishing a “Chippendales” type establishment in Israel. What type of assistance and tax benefits does the Israeli government provide to new businesses of olim chadashim? Are there many such entertainment facilities in Israel?  I would like some idea as to how stiff the competition would be.  Do Israeli women, as a rule, like to look at males dancing in skimpy G-strings?  Are they generous tippers?  Would they put a shekel to the shmeckel?  If I hire other olim chadashim as dancers, would they have to pay any taxes on their tips?   Can I employ dancers who have not had a briss ?  I might want to hire one or two to add variety to the show lineup. Is a liquor license hard to obtain in Israel.  Do I have to bribe any officials to receive one?  To whom is it customary to pay proteksia money to start a business and keep it going and approximately how much to they ask for?  Thank you for your help.

If there were commenting Olympics, this one would bag a super-gold.

That’s all!

That’s it – 7 tips + 1 on how to market yourself using blogs and social media. Thanks to those who came to my session – it was great meeting you!

And now, a bit about the Tel Aviv Writer’s Cafe:

It was started 3 years ago by Stephanie Freid, a freelance writer and journalist, as a way of grouping Tel Aviv area writers together for networking and topical discussions on everything from how and where to look for jobs to tips on approaching editors to discussing what makes good journalism to deciding on filing taxes in Israel and abroad. Attendees come from a variety of writing backgrounds including technical, journalism, marketing, book writing & blogging.
Writer Forum guests have included NBC New bureau chief/author Martin Fletcher who spoke about his experiences covering world conflict and his acclaimed first book “Breaking News”, successful book author Matt Beynon Rees on taking a journalism career to the realm of fiction novel writing, NY Times writer Dina Kraft on covering conflict in Israel and why it seems to hit a nerve among so many, Pajamas Media editor Alison Kaplan Sommer on how to slot into the new era of blog writing, Israel Project Executive Director Marcus Sheff on keeping the foreign media informed and celeb blogger Lisa Goldman on how her blog propelled her into the limelight.

For more info, please contact Stephanie at [stefanella.stef at gmail.com].

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Why blog

Why Start a Blog and 25 Tips to Make it Work, Conversation Agent, Nov. 6, 2008

iMedia Connection: Five Reasons to Blog

Social Media still on rise: Comparative global study

Blogging tips

Blogging Tips for Beginners from Problogger

Blogging Tips from Lorelle VanFossen

Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog — Condensed from Dozens of Bloggers’ Experiences

The Ultimate Blogger Writing Guide, Dean Rieck, CopyBlogger

You Need a Blog Strategy, Darren Rowse, Problogger, Dec. 10, 2008

Social Media Tips

Let’s talk: Social Media for Small Business – e-book from Microsoft (who would’ve thought)

If I Started Today, Chris Brogan, Nov. 22, 2008 – Chris Brogan gives advice on how he would start a social media strategy from scratch

The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook, Tamar Weinberg, Techipedia, Dec. 10, 2008

Combining blogging with social media

Your Social Media Strategy Starts with Monitoring, Marketing Profs – before you dive into social media, you must monitor it first.

How to Develop a Social Media Plan for Your Business in 5 Steps, Mashable – Great 5 step guide to getting your business into social media

How to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message, SEOmoz – a business-minded look at thirty sites whose content fits the Web 2.0 description

The Essential Guide to Social Media (PDF)

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I met some inspiring and fantastic women there, and learned about some interesting technologies. It is certainly motivating to see that success is possible for women in the Israeli hi-tech industry.

Here is the presentation that I gave at the meeting on the topic of Blogs and SEO – Why blogs are so great for SEO. Enjoy!

| View | Upload your own

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The Drudge Retort

Many sites and blogs on the web, like The Drudge Retort, link to articles of interest on other sites by displaying the title and a short excerpt of a few lines from the original article, with a link to click through to read the rest of the article. This is considered accepted practice under the laws of fair use, which state that people can quote from other publications without asking for permission from the creator in certain circumstances. The New York Times gives the example of a book reviewer, who does not need to ask permission from the publisher in order to quote parts of the book in their review.

Bloggers Rebel

The blogosphere has not taken AP’s actions lightly. In a post titled “Here’s Our New Policy On A.P. stories: They’re Banned,” TechCrunch says that AP should consider all these links a favor, and that they can’t make their own rules. TechCrunch says that AP has taken this type of behavior too far, and as a result AP is now banned on TechCrunch until further notice:

So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist. We don’t see them, we don’t quote them, we don’t link to them. They’re banned until they abandon this new strategy, and I encourage others to do the same until they back down from these ridiculous attempts to stop the spread of information around the Internet.

Plagiarism vs. Fair Use

I am strongly against stealing content. People work hard to create intellectual property, whether it’s movies, music, or writing, and just because it’s easy to steal doesn’t mean that it’s ok. At the same time, the web is about sharing content, and sites enjoy greater success the more their content is recommended and linked to by others. Sites like The Drudge Retort aren’t copying content – they are linking to the original source with short excerpts. By threatening people who share their content, AP is causing themselves damage two-fold:

1. They look like the big, bad corporation who looks down upon the plebes from their ivory towers.
2. People will think twice before sharing their articles with others on the web for fear that they will be sued.

The big bad corporation is an unsavory character that doesn’t mesh with today’s web. Instead of shunning its audience and those who want to share its content, AP may want to consider learning what the web is about today, and working with it rather than against it.

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Privacy by doc18

This week Emily Gould, former Editor at the mega-gossip-blog Gawker, published a stunning and moving description in the New York Times of her experience as a blogger who exposed all, both with regards to her own personal life, and those of celebrities. Her piece is fascinating and disturbing, and raises a lot of questions about the boundaries we set up and break down between our real-life identities, and those of our online personas.

One of the questions that I’m often asked about blogging is about how far bloggers should go in exposing their private lives. This aspect of blogging makes people nervous, since blogging is obviously a very personal endeavor, with people exposing their personal experiences, opinions and agendas.

In addition, many bloggers have seen that posts relating more detailed personal information are often more successful and engaging than those that just relate their opinions. So the question becomes: do I have to write about my personal life in order to succeed as a blogger?

You need to be public. And private.

In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. If you are blogging for professional purposes, it is very important that you stick with the main topic of your blog, and not deviate with whole posts dedicated to your dog’s antics or your spouse’s new haircut. People are reading your blog because they perceive you as an expert in your field, and they want to learn from your wisdom in that area. By writing about subjects unrelated to your main topic, you’ll make your readers wonder if it’s worth their while reading your blog post when there are five gazillion others out there that won’t waste their time.

Also, as we all know, exposing too much can actually be dangerous. There are unsavory creatures prowling the web, looking for juicy personal tidbits that they can use to harm you, whether it’s by stealing your identity, stalking you until you are too afraid to even leave your house, or in other unpleasant ways.

At the same time,you must be personal (and personable) when blogging. Personality is the main difference between conventional journalism, which is supposedly objective or, in the case of opinion pieces, sophisticated and controlled, and blogging, which is emotional, temperamental, and highly subjective – and way more fun to read!

Striking the balance

Here are three tips to help you maintain that balance between publicity and privacy:

• Make sure to use the word “I” when writing as much as possible.
• Stay focused on the topic of your blog. Remember that your readers are there to hear your words of wisdom, and that should keep you on course.
• And most of all: if you wouldn’t want your friends, parents or coworkers to read it, don’t put it on the web! There’s this company called Google that works hard to expose your web content.

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Techshoret holds an annual conference in Jerusalem, and I was invited to speak on the topic of Blogging and Social Media as Marketing Tools for Hi-Tech Companies since they decided to add some non-technical writing lectures to the mix.

My lecture covered case studies of businesses and their successes and failures in the blogosphere, and how the world of marketing is changing to the point where blogs and social media are a necessary part of today’s marketing strategy.

I promised the participants that I would upload my presentation, and here it is (finally)!

Hollywood on a Shoestring Budget

I am also including the great presentation given by Benjy Caplan who works at ECI Telecom. Benjy spoke about how to create great videos without being a professional videographer. His presentation was interesting because he explained how his company uses video as part of their user manuals. I think this is brilliant, because so many Israeli companies have overseas customers who don’t really speak English, and the best way to communicate in that situation is visually. In addition, his company saves the costs of sending technicians overseas to help clients by sending them help videos instead.

Benjy gave us one real example of how his company used a video to help clients in India install one of their products. The clients sent ECI a picture of their installation, which was a jumble of wires. Instead of sending technicians over to fix things up, Benjy produced an Oscar-worthy video with step-by-step visual instructions of where to put which wire.

With so many Israeli companies exporting overseas, I think many should learn from Benjy’s example and save themselves a lot of time and money by adding videos to their customer support services.

Enjoy!

| View | Upload your own

| View | Upload your own

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Commtouch, one of the world’s leading email spam fighters, has now officially launched their new corporate blog, Commtouch Cafe, which was built by none other than…illuminea (i.e. us)!

Founded in 1991 in Israel and publicly traded on the NASDAQ (CTCH), Commtouch’s technologies help companies avoid the rising costs of email spam by constantly monitoring, identifying and blocking new malware attacks. To accomplish this, the company analyzes the distribution patterns of billions of email messages per month. That’s quite a job.

The new blog, called Commtouch Cafe, aims to “show the face & voice of the people behind Commtouch’s technology; share the type of informal information that [they] are exposed to daily just wandering the halls here, that might also interest our partner community or other spam/virus fighters; and have some fun.” This blog is the place to go if you want to keep up on the latest reports, figures and developments in the world of spam and malware.

Now I know they are my clients, so you probably should take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but this move by Commtouch into the world of social media marketing is very impressive for the following reasons:

• Commtouch is publicly traded. Many publicly traded companies cite the complicated compliance issues of stock exchanges as reasons not to have a blog. Commtouch saw the value of becoming part of the online conversation, and overcame any obstacles that they may have faced in order to do this.
• They also launched with a new viral video. Not only did Commtouch launch a blog, but they combined it with the launch of a cute animated video they made that is now on YouTube. (The video is below.)
• The content is written with a web audience in mind. Big corporations often speak in long expanses of corporate speak. The posts on Commtouch Cafe are short and contain a lot of visuals, like video and images.
• They are an Israeli company. Big Israeli companies in particular are still staying away from blogging. A notable exception is Answers.com, a large publicly traded company with an obscure and hard-to-find corporate blog (if you look up Answers.com blog, you won’t find it): no.stupid.answers. This blog is also pretty good – short, useful posts about questions and answers.

Congratulations to Commtouch on their entry into the world of social media, and may this signal the start of a new trend among Israeli companies!

Here’s the Commtouch video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnD50mSvLPk[/youtube]

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There are so many social media sites and tools out there, that it’s hard to know which to pay attention to, and which to ignore. Also, how do we use them effectively and still retain time to get some real work done?

A recent discussion took place on the CIWI (Connecting Independent Writers in Israel) mailing list about how to start a blog, and whether one should start one at all. One writer was of the opinion that blogs are passe, and that users should concentrate on microblogging mediums, like Tumblr and Twitter.

In my opinion, the microblogging tools are a nice addition to an overall social media strategy, but are weak on their own. Many of the most popular people on Twitter, for example, are those who have built up a following for themselves via their blogs. They use Twitter to drive people to new posts on their blogs, and to create a supplementary stream of information. Much of the information on Twitter is backed up by longer posts or articles on other sites.

Blog, Twitter, both, none? 

So what is the best way to create an effective web presence? Do we blog, do we tweet, or do we do both?

Adopting a social media strategy can be a daunting task, particularly due to the wide range of tools and services available. Users need a strategy that is effective, yet also gives them time to have a life outside of the web.

Here’s how I have structured my social media activity. This is not necessarily the only or right way to go, but it can give you an idea as to how to get started:

1. Blogs: I use this blog to write about different issues related to marketing and business. In order to keep up with the world of WordPress, which is the platform we use to build all our sites and blogs, I also write a blog called WordPressGarage, which we use as a kind of online manual for knowledge management. WordPress’ categorization features such as categories, tags and search, are excellent for managing information. WordPressGarage has become more than just a blog: I use WordPress’ Blogroll to keep track of my links on the Links We Love page, and I’ve set up a microblogging section in the sidebar called Shorties, which is where I post really short bits of info that don’t justify a real blog post. I could have accomplished this with del.icio.us and Tumblr, but I really prefer to keep everything in one place if I can.
2. Twitter: I don’t really like Twitter, but I use it because I know it is effective. It also helps me keep up with the social media arena, and I have to admit I’ve found some pretty interesting content thanks to the twitterers that I follow. I post here short things that aren’t appropriate for my blogs, or I post links to new posts on my blogs. (You can find me here on Twitter: http://twitter.com/miriamschwab.)
3. LinkedIn: LinkedIn was really boring for a while, but it seems to be picking up, although it’s still not the type of site I’d visit on a regular basis (unlike the site mentioned in step 4). The advantage of LinkedIn is that it gives me a place to create a professional profile that people can easily find on the web. Other than that, not much happens there (unless I’m missing something). It’s like a really boring party where we all shake hands, and then sit around looking at each other. And here I am on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/miriamschwab
4. Facebook: facebook acts as a kind of aggregator for all the content that I publish all over the web. I mashed together my blog RSS feeds into one feed, and that feed is pulled into my facebook profile’s notes section. My twitters (tweets) appear in my facebook status. Any extra stuff that I want to publish or share that aren’t directly connected to marketing or WordPress are published there too, like videos, links and events.

Here are the social media sites that I would like to be more active in should the days suddenly become 40 hours long: flickr, YouTube, de.licio.us, digg, and StumbleUpon.

The above still uses up a lot of my time, but it ensures that my “online presence” stays fresh and current, and my offline presence retains some semblance of a life.

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More and more professionals are starting their own blogs. There is a growing realization that blogging can help advance a person professionally, or market a business. It helps establish them as thought leaders, create relationships with people they wouldn’t normally connect to, and increase search engine rankings for their corporate sites.

But it’s hard to know where to start. Here are some tips that can help you start off on the right foot, so that you can grow as a blogger and head in the direction of becoming a “really professional blogger” (RPB):

1. Really professional bloggers have self-hosted blogs. A self-hosted blog is a blog that is hosted on a person’s own hosting account, as opposed to a blog that is hosted for free on WordPress.com or Google’s Blogger. To self-host your own blog, you need to install one of the blogging platforms on your hosting. This means an investment of about $10 a year for a domain name, and about $8 a month for hosting. So when I say investing, we’re not talking thousands. But it shows that they’re taking their blogging seriously. This also means that they are not at the mercy of WordPress.com and Google’s Terms of Service, and they also avoid the risk of being blocked in certain countries that block entire social networks like WordPress.com.
2. Really professional bloggers have their own domain name. This means that the domain name of their blog is not something like miriam.blogspot.com, but is www.miriam.com, or www.company.com/blog. If the idea of hosting your own blog makes you nervous, but you do want to have your own domain name, sign up for a blog at www.wordpress.com, and then upgrade to their paid service that allows you to have your own domain name. This will also make it easier for you to move to your own self-hosted blog with that domain name in the future. (We just did that for a client and the move went really smoothly. All their URLs were preserved.) But just note that people will still know that you are using the WordPress.com hosted blogging service because their favicon appears next to your URL in browsers. That just means you can’t personalize your favicon, but it’s not the end of the world.
3. Really professional bloggers use WordPress as their blogging platform of choice. Some may argue with me, but many if not most of the leading bloggers (except Seth, maybe) use WordPress for their blogs. Bloggers love WordPress because: 1. It has a large user community; 2. It is really flexible and many cool and wonderful things can be done with WordPress; 3. It is pretty optimized for search engines out of the box, and can be optimized even more by WordPress designers and developers. If you don’t want to invest right now in your blog, and you’re just getting your feet wet, it’s a good idea to get started with a free blog at WordPress.com. This gives you a few advantages: 1. You can easily migrate (move) your blog over to a self-hosted WordPress blog when you feel ready; 2. You will be used to the WordPress user interface and features, since the admin is basically the same for the hosted and self-hosted versions of WordPress; 3. You look much savvier than a blogspot blogger. (Ok, that’s very subjective, but at least I’ll think you’re cooler!)
4. Really professional bloggers have customized blog designs. This is a serious investment in your blogging career, but in a world of millions of blogs, it’s important to find a way to differentiate yourself and show people you are serious about what you are doing. But you don’t have to worry about that right now – WordPress makes it easy to change your blog’s appearance at any time. It’s like putting a different dress on your content: the content all stays the same, but it’s now wearing its fall wardrobe.

So if you’ve been bitten by the blogging bug, and want to get started on the right foot, I think the above tips can help you start a blogging career that lets your blog grow with you, and vice versa.

Happy blogging!

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The Oct. 30 meeting of the Yokneam Forum of Technical Writers (Elephant) will feature a workshop on “Using Blogging as a Marketing Tool“. Meetings of the Forum are free and open to the public (most are technical or marcom writers, but others are welcome). The standard for presentations and workshops at the Forum is very high because many of the participants come to meetings with a lot of technical and practical experience. The informal atmosphere leads to a discussion format rather than frontal presentations. Meetings always begin with AA style introductions and announcements. Networking is always an important part of the meetings, especially at the start and during breaks.

Location: Yokneam City Hall

Date: Oct. 30

Time: 18:00-19:15

Cost: Free, but you are expected to bring a refreshment to share (New England style potluck) and registration is required

Registration: www.elephant.org.il/headlines/oct_30_workshop_on_using_blogging_as_a_m.html

Join us to learn how blogs can help you take your company’s marketing to the next level. We will cover:

• What makes a blog a blog?
• What are all these things we’ve heard about: RSS feeds, trackbacks, pingbacks?
• What system should we use to blog: we’ll look at blogger, typepad, wordpress.com and self-hosted WordPress.
• How blogs benefit your business: increase search engine rankings, control your online brand, strengthen customer loyalty, and more.
• Blog writing strategies: how often should we post, what should we write about, how long do the posts need to be, how do we find new material?

I know Yokneam isn’t the most convenient location, but it’s not impossible, so I really hope I’ll see you there!

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Last night I went to my first iDrink event. For those of you who are not familiar with iDrink, it’s a party/event for Israelis in the Internet and web industries. The format usually includes presentations by startups and sponsors of the event, some free drinks, and a lot of socializing and networking. This was their seventh event, and there were tons of people there. At first, we couldn’t even get into the bar, and people were literally spilling out the door. But that was ok, cuz even the door was a social place to be. We got inside in time to hear/see the end of a presentation by a startup called KitchenBug. It was so noisy that I couldn’t hear so well, but what I saw and heard made me a little worried: a pretty presentation with really cool shiny graphics, and a concept that I think has little value (sorry KitchenBug and investors). This screams “bubble” – pretty face, no content, investors investing. Yikes.

Aside from that, I actually had fun. Despite the fact that I was the only religious woman who looked like she stepped out of Biblical times, I met some interesting people and got an in-depth explanation of a new blogging-widget being developed by one of the startups (sorry, but that one also has signs of a bubble).

So what do you think it’s like to get into a room with a bunch of web fanatics? Well, upon meeting you they immediately take out their phone and “friend” you on facebook. I’m serious. Also, I had more than one person come up to me and say hi because they recognized me from facebook. I’m surprised no one was live-blogging.

The line between real and virtual life has become very thin.

Anyways, it was an experience. Kol hakavod to the organizers – it’s really great that they provide a setting for everyone in the industry to get together in a casual atmosphere. In a bar, it’s so easy to be friends, especially after a few drinks.

Maybe real life isn’t that different from facebook after all:

• Real life – drink, be friends
• facebook – “friend me,” we’re friends

And in that spirit, Demetri Maritin on the Daily Show gives his point of view on social networking:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpcvR1tIBfQ[/youtube]

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WordCamp Israel is fast approaching, and I wanted to update you on what’s going on.

First of all, the registration closed a little over a week ago – capacity has been reached. I know there are a lot of disappointed people who really wanted to come, but hopefully it will either work out for them this year, or they’ll manage to register in time for next year’s conference.

Second, I’m going to be moderating the panel on Blogging and Business. We have a really great panel, and I hope it will be enjoyable and informative. Here’s a bit about our panelists:

• Me. My company, illuminea provides blog development and strategic consultation services to businesses.
• Ouriel Ohayon. Ouriel is the General Manager at LGiLab, a VC company, and he blogs on VCs, business, startups, and more. His blog has a very wide following.
• Yigal Chamish. Yigal is an expert in knowledge management, and approaches blogs as a tools for creating effective learning and knowledge-sharing environments.
• Kfir Pravda. Kfir produces magazines and video for the Web, and works with companies and groups both locally and internationally to help them use blogs as business and marketing tools.
• Yisrael Blechman. Yisrael is the CTO of Blink, which specializes in research, development and application of Web 2.0 methodologies and technologies for both intra- and extra-organizational purposes.

Third, Lorelle has written a few posts in preparation of the upcoming conference that provide an interesting perspective on blogging and Israel:

• Lorelle on blogging and Israel – Lorelle wrote this post specially for the WordCamp Israel English blog. It talks about blogging, and Lorelle’s past experiences in Israel.
• WordCamp Israel October 25 with Lorelle – Lorelle writes about the conference and Israeli society on Lorelle on WordPress.com.
• WordCamp Israel: Exploring Israeli Bloggers – This post was published on the Blog Herald, and takes a look at some of Israel’s most interesting or popular bloggers.

That’s it for now, and I hope I’ll see you there! Remember: Oct. 25, at 9am at Michlelet Afeka in Tel Aviv.

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It’s now official – Lorelle Van Fossen (yes, THE Lorelle) is going to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming WordCamp Israel blogging conference!

When: Oct. 25, 9am to 4pm
Where: Michlelet Afeka – Bney Efraim, Tel Aviv Tel: 1-800-37-37-10
Cost: Free! But you must register to reserve your place.

Among the topics to be covered at the conference is blogging and business (I’m on that panel ), how to create an effective web presence with WordPress, and practical tips on installing WordPress and using Plugins.

The conference now has an official web site, but if Hebrew ain’t your cup o’ tea, you can get most of the information on the English blog (written by…me!). You can also download banners in English and Hebrew to put on your blogs and sites, like the image at the top of this post, over here.

The Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) and Michlelet Afeka are the main sponsors behind the event, and have contributed the venue and Lorelle’s plane ticket.

What’s amazing about this event is that it’s been organized by some run-of-the-mill bloggers who thought it would be a good idea. Most of all, Tal Galili, a Masters student in Tel Aviv’s Mathematics Dept., has invested a huge amount of time organizing this whole thing, and WordCamp Israel exists basically because of him.

I’m really excited! I think that some of the lectures will be better than others, but most of all this is a great opportunity to meet the people behind the Israeli blogging and Internet scene, which is full of dynamic, innovative and creative individuals and companies.

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I quickly contacted as many people as I could about this blatant discrimination, including reporting this on a mailing list for journalists and writers. This happened last Thursday, Sept. 21, and by Friday morning all of the related web pages had been taken down, and were changed to include Israeli Jews.

But instead of blowing over, Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu reported on this on IsraelNationalNews.com, complete with pictures of the State Dept.’s shoddy attempt at correcting their online Word documents with Track Changes on for all to see! (And then with a virus inside. It just wasn’t their day.)
His article was subsequently picked up by prominent blogger Yid with Lid, and since then it has spread like wildfire throughout the political blogosphere. Here is a partial list of blogs that reported this story, and I will be updating it as I discover more:

• Yid with Lid: Miriam’s Story-UPDATE/US State Department “No Jews Allowed” Program
• Michelle Malkin: State Department subsidized No Israeli Jews Allowed program
• Debbie Schlussel: State Dept.: No Jews Allowed for Tax-Funded Biz Program for Arabs
• Mere Rhetoric: State Department Tries To Cleanse Obviously Illegal “No Jews Allowed” Application But Is Too Fucking Stupid To Turn Off Track Changes
• Atlas Shrugs: State Dept: No Jews Allowed
• Aliyah! Step-by-Step: U. of Cal program–no Jews allowed
• Right Truth: No Jews in State Department program, no Jewish bullets in Iraq, Afghanistan
• Solomonia: US State Department backing program that discriminates against Jewish Israeli entrepreneurs — Till they got caught
• The God Blog: No Jews allowed: Judenrein U.S. program
• The Jewish Week, by Michele Chabin: Federal Program Barred Israeli Jews For Three Years
• Yid with Lid:State Department Anti-Semitic Program: The Rest of the Story
• Israpundit: “No Jews Allowed” Application

Will any “traditional” news outlets pick this up and report on it? Only time will tell…although time seems to be indicating that they are either unaware, or disinterested.

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First, here’s some background: we started to officially launch our new site on Thursday. As part of our launch strategy, we began to bookmark articles on the major social media sites, including digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and Facebook. Within minutes, one of our articles was picked up by diggers and the number of diggs began to rise.

At first we thought the diggs must be coming from friends. But the diggs kept rising, until they began to rise at a furious rate. The article landed on digg’s home page.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with digg, here is a short explanation of its importance: digg is a site where people “vote” for articles. These votes are called “diggs,” and the more “diggs” an article gets, the higher its popularity rating. Articles that land on digg’s home page are exposed to zillions of digg readers, and this usually results in an onslaught of traffic to the article. And this, my friends, is what web site owners dream of.

This trip to digg’s home page has been an interesting learning experience, so I would like to share my lessons with you:

1. If you want to build traffic to your site, bookmark your articles. By bookmarking your articles on digg, del.icio.us, and other community sites, you will make people aware of your article. Once they are aware, others may start bookmarking it too. You never know which of your articles will take off, so you might as well do this.
2. Have your site on a serious dedicated or virtual private server. My sites are all on shared hosting. That’s ok on a usual day, but it can’t handle the “digg effect.” As soon as our site started rising up the home page, the servers crashed and the site went down. That means that at the greatest moment, nobody can see your site. I called our hosting provider and begged them to get it back up – I told them to name their price, just to get it up. They said “Sorry ma’am, there’s nothing we can do. You should consider a dedicated server.” (Which is a service that they don’t even provide!) Of course, they could have borrowed some server juice from someone else for that short time that I was exceeding my CPU, but they wouldn’t budge. Very bad service. So if you want to get to digg’s home page, and reap the benefits, make sure your site is on a server that can handle it and has decent service.
3. Have a killer title. It seems that articles that make it to digg’s home page are those that are dugg by digg devotees. These are people who invest a lot of time and effort in digging articles that they deem worthy, and monitoring certain other key diggers to see what they digg. I think that a large percentage of them don’t even actually read the articles they are digging. They just look at the title, see who else has dugg it, and digg it too.
4. digg devotees like science/tech/geeky articles. Articles on technology, science, and other “geeky” subjects are loved by digg devotees. They also seem to like American politics.
5. diggers don’t like blog spam. Blog spam is when you write a short post about someone else’s article or post with the goal of gaining visitors off of the success of the blog/article you are writing about. If diggers suspect that this is what you are doing, you will be shunned. They want original content.
6. digg comments are a culture unto themselves. People can comment under every link that is dugg. This becomes a whole conversation unto itself, but what’s even more amazing is that the commenters can digg up other comments up or down! This is like a rating system for the comments, and if a comment gets dugg up, it means people liked it, and if it gets dugg down, it means people think it sucks.
7. To make money from ads, you need to monetize your site smartly. My site is monetized with Google Adsense. Although thousands of people clicked, I made something like $2. I made almost as much from two clicks on my other blog, WordPressGarage.com. I don’t know why the click rates were so cheap, but that really sucks. Your visitors will click on ads – just try to make sure you’re making money from those clicks.

The site is still getting traffic from digg, and the number of feed subscribers that shot up during the digg effect is now coming down. Therefore, I have yet to see whether this traffic can be maintained in some way, or if all those readers will disappear as quickly as they came.

Anyone have any other words of wisdom for those who aspire to achieve digg stardom?

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A day later a study was released by the University of Texas and Chitika that shows a different problem in the ad revenue business model: the top 1% of blogs are getting 20% of the revenue. In 2006, the top 15% drew in over 80% of the revenue. This means that the huge majority of monetized sites and blogs is fighting over a tiny piece of the pie.
Many are criticizing this report for its unprofessionalism and even bias by involving an advertising company in the study (Chitika), but even if these results are off, it still indicates that a disproportionate amount of advertising revenue goes to a small group of site owners.

Which yet again brings me to the issue I addressed in my previous post on this matter: how can new companies have brilliant ideas about how they’re going to build up a community, but have no idea how make money off of it except with advertising revenues?

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