Syntax and Style produces and distributes a quarterly email newsletter through Constant Contact. Article topics focus on small business website development, writing tips, and good reading material.

Getting to Know You - On the Web

The early inventors of the computer could not have imagined what human touch would add to their calculating machines. Our first contact with computers was in the workplace - where they stayed at the end of the day. As they served us by analyzing our efforts and organizing our work-flow, verbal communication quietly slipped into their function. Cut, copy, and paste were manna from heaven. Spell-check, for the spelling challenged (like me), was beyond our wildest dreams.

We found ourselves lingering at our desks at the end of the day, writing a newsy two-page letter to family or friends. It was a breeze.

And soon, creative minds gave us internal communication abilities so that The Office Memo arrived at our work station, without the need for the sender or the receiver to leave their desks.

Can you remember when you first saw the swimming-fish screen saver? In my mind, this was a pinnacle in the addition of esthetically pleasing elements to the computer. The computer suddenly looked less like a machine.

Human touch warmed the keyboard and the content of the desktop. Like primitive humans shaping rocks to advance their quality of life, we took punctuation symbols and created smiling or frowning faces to express our emotions to each other. The semi-colon served along-side a parentheses for sending a playful wink. Inert bits and bytes were molded into human emotion.

The overworked and the entrepreneur brought computers into their homes. Big hulking CPUs collected dust and joined the chorus of hums of our other household machinery. Soon, most of us had home computers and our children taught themselves their way around the keyboard.

And now we sit at home, with our sleek PCs, Notebooks, PDAs, and iPhones (the all-encompassing communication tool) - emailing, IMing, Skyping - communicating to all corners of the world, in real time.

Our image, our thoughts, and our professional identity are captured in MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The online social and professional networks have embedded in our culture a whole new way for us to get to know each other.

Business websites are losing the static sanitized presentation as they strive to convey the energy and excitement of their corporate personality. Photos of those in leadership roles show smiling faces and absent is the tie. We are human and we want to convey our spirit. These aren't your daddies' websites.

As we now flood the Internet with who we are as much as what we do, individuals are beginning to imprint their place on the web - and not only as it relates to their work and not simply as a network profile. Like a multi-dimensional image of ourselves, we are building creative websites where we share our proficiency in our work, express our thoughts, display our accomplishments, and promote our expertise.

There was a time, and it wasn't so long ago, when it seemed incomprehensible that each of us would one day have our own phone number. Yet today, the cell phone number is a personal link to an astounding number of individuals on this planet.

Likewise, individual identity on the Internet is growing by leaps and bounds as the building of a site is made easier with templates and content management systems (CMS). The individual's website is a branding of the self. Done well, it's clever, artistic, energetic, and inviting. It is the embodiment of a human's spirit and accomplishments, miraculously displayed in pixels.

Humans are so cool.

Give us a call when you are ready to go solo on the web.

Maximizing Your LinkedIn Profile
Link Your Name In Your Signature Block!

LinkedIn is a networking site on the internet that promotes community among professionals. It's a place where people can present their profile - sharing work history, education, and recommendations.

Through LinkedIn, people link to work associates, thereby expanding their connection to the networks of others. Ten immediate links might yield hundreds of further contacts, as each direct link, by degrees of separation, adds all of its connections.

The intention is that all this connectivity helps grow your business and/or your career. It's helpful when you are looking for work - in the form of either a position within a company or a new customer or client.

Like all web services, LinkedIn is only as good as the user's knowledge of its power. Fortunately, LinkedIn provides ten excellent tips through a link that appears at the bottom of the first page that displays after you sign in. The article is, "Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn" by Guy Kawasaki.

I found that I had to read each suggestion in the article several times. But, by doing so, and by following the instructions carefully, I've improved my overall business visibility on the web. My business website is receiving 70 impressions per week - up from a dozen or so two months ago. While using the LinkedIn suggestions may not be solely responsible for the increase, it certainly is a factor.

My favorite tip is the linking of my name - in the signature block of my emails - to my profile on LinkedIn. This link gives immediate access to information that validates my expertise in my work. I try to remember to use it wherever my name appears.

If you use LinkedIn, use it to its full power!

Making the Most of Your Visibility on the Web

Let's consider your web presence. While most businesses have a website, there are times when it is worthwhile to maintain a second site or a blog. If you offer multiple services or products, teasing one or two out of the pack, to stand alone and draw impressions (visitors) of their own, can be worthwhile.

Linking your web presences to each other, ensures that 'cross pollination' (my term!) occurs as visitors peruse your links.

I'll use my Syntax and Style site as an example. The site itself represents a business that offers writing and editing services for marketing needs, along with website building for small businesses. Linked to the Portfolio page, however, are other sideline areas of work that support the skills I use in my work through Syntax and Style.

For instance, I maintain numerous photo files. Photography is a hobby for me. But, often, my photo skills are required to enhance a website. From the Portfolio page, visitors can access a sampling of my photography by linking to my online gallery at pbase, a service for displaying photos.

Additionally, visitors to the Portfolio page of my website can view samples of my writing styles by linking to two blogs I maintain. Each blog has an entirely different subject, giving the viewer a better understanding of the range of writing I offer. Likewise, each blog (as well as my website) has its own set of search engine terms, and will therefore draw a different audience. One blog is observations of a pond near my home, the other represents a book I have written.

Each of us tends to get lazy about updating and refreshing our website with new text and new search terms. But, with a blog, each new post generates a new set of search terms, thereby resetting the bait for the trolling viewers. (Each time you post to your blog, be sure to set the tags for that article, expanding the potential for visits.)

Key to all of this, of course, is that visitors to my blogs have access to a link to my business site.

You will realize immediately that the visitor to a blog about a pond, might not be a person who would otherwise find the Syntax and Style site. But, there is the chance that the visitor might stumble into Syntax and Style from the pond blog, and, perhaps they (or someone they know) need the services offered there.

The partnering of sites that represent your work and interests becomes your platform. And, I think you can visualize the multiple threads into the world-wide-web that would emanate to and from your platform - a far greater number than would be generated from your website only.

Finally, 1and1 hosts my website. Through 1and1, I have access to marketing data that tells me from what source in my platform visitors arrived at my website. I can see the percentage of visitors generated by my blogs. Having this tracking data assists me as I make decisions about where to focus my marketing energies.

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Linking Tip

We all network and develop work relationships with lots of folks. As you form new alliances, look for ways to link your business buddies within your website and ask them to do the same for you. 'The web' is meant to be an interlinking network. Help expand your own reach within the web, as well as your associates', by promoting their services on your site, and asking them to do likewise for you.

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