Business Tips for Web Sites, Blogs, Social Media and Online Marketing

On Sunday Netflix CEO Reed Hastings apologized on his blog for how the company handled their recent price changes with their DVD and streaming services. It was an attempt at some long-overdue damage control; two months after they announced their new pricing plan, Netflix has lost half its value.

Adding photos or graphics to your blog post not only helps to break up the text of your article, but it also can make your article more interesting, more memorable, or easier to understand. If you are writing a blog post about a specific product, take a picture of that product and include it in your blog post. That's an easy scenario. But what about those blog posts where you don't have a picture (and can't easily take a picture) of something that is relevant to your content? That's where Flickr comes in handy.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an article about an organization (WEAC) that was setting a good example on social media. A few days later, WEAC posted their own blog article detailing the amazing results of their recent social media presence: "Wisconsin collective bargaining crisis causes social media explosion" by Bill Hurley.

One way to learn how to use social media for your business is to look at how other companies and organizations are successfully handling their social media efforts. Over the past week I have been closely following the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) through various social media sites. WEAC represents approximately 98,000 public education employees who would be among the public employees who would be affected by Governor Scott Walker’s proposed budget bill that would eliminate most public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Protests at the capital started one week ago and have gained momentum each day, in no small part due to WEAC’S social media presence. Regardless of your opinion on the proposed budget bill, you can look at WEAC’s social media efforts as a good example of how to successfully use social media for your business or organization.

I'm a huge fan of Milwaukee Bucks Center, Andrew Bogut. But not only is he successful on the court, he also has a huge Twitter following (almost 37,000 followers, of which I am one of). In honor of the Big #6, here are 6 Twitter Lessons your business (and mine!) can learn from Andrew Bogut:

WordPress is setup by default with an "admin" username as the administrator. However, if someone wants to hack into your blog, the first username they'll try is "admin". Then all they need to do is figure out your password (which can be easier than you think!). To beef up your security, I recommend you change the administrator's username from "admin" to something else.

So, you want to change your Twitter name but are worried you'll lose your current followers? You can change your Twitter username and still keep your followers! Just follow these easy steps below as I walk you through how I changed my Twitter username from "digital_K" to "digitalkward".

You've taken the time to add a Facebook "Like Box" to your website. It worked great at first - showing your most recent posts and/or the people who have "Liked" your Facebook page. But now you notice that instead of displaying your Facebook information in the box on your website, it now shows this error: "This public profile is not visible".

This week Facebook started implementing a few changes that affect the appearance of profiles and pages. According to Facebook, "These updates are designed to simplify navigation for users, reduce complexity for developers, and enable us to build the next generation of tools for growing your business with Facebook." Here are the new changes:

Facebook recently replaced their “Become a Fan” button for Facebook Pages with a "Like" button. From Facebook: