Video made by KeepSakePix

It is always nice to have some pictures when you post a blog article. People don’t read a long entry of blog without any pictures unless they are really interested in the topic. The picture does not have to be related to the post. But it is better if the picture is original and something you have taken.

You have to be careful with the copyright when using a picture you found on the internet. There are many scary stories about getting in trouble for using someone else’s copyright protected material.

But as long as you are using the pictures you took by yourself. You do not have to worry about that.

Plus, pictures show your personality and interests.

You do not have to be a professional cameraman to take a picture for your blog. You do not need a fancy SLR. I use my iPhone for almost all photos I use in my blog.

Here are some of the pictures I took this morning during my hike at Ranch San Antonio park.

iPhone 4 / HDR

iPhone 4 / HDR

iPhone 4 / HDR Pro (an photo effect app)

iPhone 4 no HDR

iPhone 4 HDR

iPhone 4 HDR Pro

iPhone 4 HDR Pro

iPhone 4 HDR Pro

iPhone 4 HDR

iPhone 4 HDR Pro

1. Do not try to sell your product online unless its unique or the price is the lowest. Do not expect to get orders automatically.
2. Do not start new blog/twitter/facebook or other SNS if you are not going to update them frequently with your own words.
3. Do not worry about giving out too much information.
4. Do not waste money on mass media ads. Use the micro-targeting advertisements.
5. Do not leave your blog/twitter/facebook un-updated.

five things you should DO

1. Register your business to location bases SNSs: Foursquare, Loopt, Gowall
2. Put that document on your blog and share.
3. Repeat popular blog entries: Latest entry doesn’t need to be most important
4. More testimonials:  Text < Image (photo, note) < Video (audio)
5. Check the service you are using.
   It’s usually less than half the price you paid one year ago, if not free yet.

I will discuss each topics individually in following posts

I had a chance to visit the twitter office in San Francisco to have lunch at their corporate cafe. This is a part of my “Corporate Cafes in Silicon Valley Blog“. And twitter was my 29th cafe to visit. The food was very interesting and good. This was the first time that I did not know what I was eating and had to take a picture of the plate under the each food on the table to record what I actually took.

Believe me, it tasted much better than it looks. And it is my photo shooting skill that made it look this way.

I had an opportunity to share the table with several twitter engineers and talk about how twitter suddenly became so popular in Japan.  Japan has the second biggest number of twitter user in the world and is one of the only country that twitter has more users than facebook.

Japanese people were ready to tweet as their main communication method has been e-mail sent from cell phone (not quite text messaging). So they were used to exchange short messages using mobile phones. But the emails were mainly sent to one person. Now with the twitter, they can share the message.

When I talk about twitter at my workshops, I always get this reaction:

I don’t understand twitter, I don’t have time and I am not interested in someone eating something or being somewhere at the moment. Why do they publicize such things that no one is interested to know? I got bored reading their tweets the minute I started twitter.

Well, that is the interesting part of twitter. The newbies tend to think that what they are getting from twitter is what others are getting. But that is wrong.

Your timeline is made from who you choose to follow. What your friend see is totally different from what you see. You do not have to follow any person that you do not want to see his/her tweets. Go ahead and remove anyone from your following list if you do not like their tweets. It is not offensive.  They don’t get a notice saying “John just removed you from his following list”.

Some people follow only their friends they know in person. Some people follow only celebrities. Some people follow news tweeted by bots (non-human program tweeting certain topics such as Weather updates).

And they all have their own expectations from twitter, the tweets they read.

Those people who uses twitter to be connected with their real world friends hates to receive business tweets.

Those people who uses twitter to receive latest information from anything they are interested in, do not mind receiving your business’s latest product news.

So, as long as they decide to follow you, its OK to tweet whatever you want. Because you are not disturbing anyone with unwanted tweets. They have a choice to un-follow you. But @mention someone who do not follow you to advertise your business is usually considered as a SPAM. They are many services that you can sign up and set up so that whenever someone tweets the  keyword you choose (such as “handyman”), it will automatically @mention the person and say “get free handyman estimate by visiting ***.com”.  It usually don’t work as the email blast don’t work. But a handwritten tweet like “Hi, I see you need someone to fix your leaking sink. We might be able to help. Please check our sink fix FAQ on our website: ***.com”.

So, twitter is no different from other online ads.  There is no quick, easy and automated advertisement that works. If you want to use twitter to advertise your business, you have to take time.

Other way to use twitter for your business is to connect with your existing customers. This is much easier and effective way to use twitter than advertising on twitter. You can tell your customer that you now have a twitter account to tweet some useful tips and occasional twitter-only discounts. If they are your customer, they will probably follow you. Try not to tweet too much. Keep your tweets informational. Now you have an easy way to communicate with your customers.

Begginer $20 (60 minutes)

• Create a blog
• Choose a design
• Create a post and page
• Upload images and files

Intermediate $30 (90 minutes)

• Customize the design
• Add  widgets
• Embed videos and maps
• Link your blog to twitter and facebook
• Submit your blog to search enginers
• Create a sign-up / contact us  form

Thank you very much for those of you who attended our Blogging for Business workshop today. I enjoyed it very much and hope you liked it, too. As we like to keep improving our workshop, your feedbacks are very important. And anyone who attended our workshop has free pass to come back to the same workshop in future.

You must bring a laptop computer with wireless internet access. (There is no hard-wire connection available.)

In this workshop you will create a WordPress blog for your business.

At the end of the workshop you will have created a blog, written one page one post, and started 5 new posts that you can easily edit.

And to make sure that you are ready to blog, we will hand out a $15 book (“WordPress in 10 minutes”) that will help you continue blogging.

Space is limited so participants will be enrolled on a first-come first-served basis.

This workshop is designed for people who do not have a WordPress blog or have just started one and are stuck!

To sign up, click the “Register” link below. The price is $50.00 and must be paid via PayPal on the linked page.

Minimum Requirement

• Laptop PC or Mac that can connect to internet via Wifi connection.
• Comfortable with operating PC/Mac and internet browser.

REGISTRATION

Blogging for Business Workshop

Date: Weds, May 26, 2010
Time: 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Location: Sunnyvale Chamber of Commerce Conference Room

Please don’t forget to make the payment by clicking the PAY NOW button below.

Well, now you can have it.

Your blog is a clone copy of yourself who spends 24 hours a day non-stop doing all the talking for you.

For Businesses Selling Products

It is easy to use the internet to find the cheapest price for almost any kind of product. But price isn’t the only factor in deciding where to buy. People want to know who they are buying from. Blogging is the best way to show them why they should buy from you.

For Businesses Selling Services

A blog is not an advertisement. No one wants to spend time reading your advertisement. What people want to know is who you are, not how great your service is. Do you have more repeat customers than new customers? If the answer is yes, you should start a blog and let people know why your customers come back.

For Professionals

People read your blog to know your expertise, knowledge, skills and credentials. Offer as much information as you can. Don’t hold back. People will get that information on the internet anyway, why not from you? You do not have to write everything, but enough so that people know that you can offer them the solution.

We have been working on this workshop because there are a lot of people who wants to start blogging but doesn’t know where to start.

With this workshop, you will start a new WordPress blog (FREE to start, no monthly charge) with your own design and address. We will show you the basics on how to edit and update your blog. How to name the blog and create the categories so that your blog will be shown on the first page of Google and Yahoo searches results.

We will also show you the technique to compose a nice informational post without spending too much time.
And to make sure that you are ready to blog, we will hand out a $15 book (“WordPress in 10 minutes”) that helps you with continue blogging.