MarketingSherpa article summing upnew CAN-SPAM rules, coming into effect July 7. Yes, I read all this boring stuff!

Just say No!

As I run out of space on the page of my to do list to add more items, I see the wisdom of this article about saying no with grace. It's written by the ArtBizCoach, Alyson Standfield.

Here are some nice articles to read on a summer Sunday morning.

Live for the Journey, not the Destination

11 Questions to Kickstart your Dream

HowTo: Make a page on MySpace!

There is no sure-fire way to increase traffic to your website, but there are a number of small, easy and inexpensive things you can do. One thing is setting up a page for your business on MySpace.com to drive traffic to your business’s website and increase the number of sites linking in to yours. There are many social networking sites out there, but MySpace.com is one of the oldest and most populous, so it can’t hurt to put your banner up there.

Having a presence on MySpace.com can help, first by brining direct traffic and second by increasing your rank in search results as you get more traffic and links in to your website. Plus, a page on MySpace.com is like a second web page, and having another web presence is basically like having a second business location in real life; it’s more likely that people will come across your business. Just make sure your MySpace.com page is a reflection of your business website and not something totally different! Finally, by getting on MySpace.com and connecting up with other southern Illinois people and businesses, we can start to develop a critical mass that will get harder and harder for people to miss in cyberspace!

Follow these steps and you’ll be up and running on MySpace.com in no time:

1. Go to http://www.myspace.com.
2. Click on “Sign Up” and fill in the required information.
3. Choose your MySpace.com URL: try to pick something that is similar to your business name or web address and is easy for people to spell and remember.
4. Confirm your email address: you will get an email in the email box you specify in order to be able to do things like add friends, post bulletins and blogs, and more.
5. Find, add and invite your friends: start with http://www.myspace.com/sispecialties.
6. Promote your MySpace.com URL: put it on your website, your business card, etc.
7. Join SITourPreneurs Group: http://groups.myspace.com/sitourpreneurs.

Setting up a page on MySpace.com is just one of the many things you can do to improve your web presence. Other options include:

• Write a weblog: Weblogs are easy to set up and update. Webpages that are frequently updated will get people coming back to your site and improve your search rankings. Also, if you write about something interesting enough, other websites will link to the articles you post and additionally increase traffic.
• Email newsletter: Sometimes it takes time to build up a relationship with potential customers before they will purchase your product or service. Plus, it’s phenomenally important to keep up relationships with existing customers. An email newsletter is an easy and inexpensive way to keep in contact with potential and existing customers. Just make sure to get permission to send people your emails!
• Cross-linking: find other sites like yours or complementary to yours and ask them to link back to your site. Make your own ‘links’ page on your website to add your ‘partner’ links to your webpage.

For more information, contact Innucopia!

Ah, life is interesting isn't it? I can't believe it's been two months since I posted to this blog. OK for today, I recommend reading this article about kick-butt viral marketing campaigns. There's got to be some good ideas in there that could be adapted to just about any business.

Google's productivity apps will outpace behemoth Microsoft Office? Everything's and everyone's moving toward free? That's what some are saying. I've gotta go, I've been meaning to set up my business email accounts on my Gmail so I can check them from anywhere instead of Outlook.

My economics teacher in high school told us the first day of class that if we could come up with something that was truly free, he would give you an automatic A in the class. No one ever got an A this way. No matter what you said he had a comeback. No one could get him.

I'm still a believer in that basic premise: nothing is free. Ever since "New Rules for the New Economy"'s "Follow the Free" rule I've been there in business as well. There's a blog post about it today that discusses the more technical side of this nothing is free issue.

However we are somewhat moving in that direction. I met with someone at a local tourism bureau this week and he was telling me about how a local web design firm wanted to charge their non-profit organization tens of thousands of dollars for a new website. All they need to be able to do is keep the content somewhat updated, get lots of content they have in printed brochures online, and list some events and coupons. Thirty GranD??? I mean I can't believe what I'm hearing. No, no no. No longer to small non-profit organizations and new businesses need to get ripped off by firms charging tens of thousands of dollars for a website, then charging again when they want to make updates to the text. There are things like Joomla, which can be combined with other things like Google's Calendars and Picasa. Voila! All "free." O except you have to get it all installed and up and running and looking the way you want it. That's where the hook is. No matter what, someone's time is going in there. But still, we're talking hours, maybe a couple days as opposed to weeks or months or months of time. Some organizations might need flashy websites for their target groups, but for most small businesses and organizations on a budget, a well organized and up-to-date website is what's important.

At any rate I would recommend to anyone building a new website or doing an update, consider something like Joomla. You can use free templates, or buy your own template (look and feel) for cheap (something like $40 I've seen), have someone spend a couple days setting it up and transferring over your existing content. Once it's up and running you'll always be able to go in and update it, as simply as going in and writing a word document. Excellent.