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howtechhelpsbiz
07-21-2009, 10:50 PM
Hey everyone, I just started a new Business and was looking for others who have small businesses....and found this wonderful forum!

I'm looking to help others grow their business by helping them understand how technology can help their business. While my website is still fairly new, please have a look at How Technology Can Help Your Business (http://www.howtechnologyhelpsbusiness.com). I will be checking in as often as I can in these forums to help people out.

vangogh
07-21-2009, 11:53 PM
Welcome to the forum Adam. I can see your site is pretty new. You may want to either fill in the about page with real content or temporarily remove it so the default WordPress text isn't showing.

Otherwise the site looks nice and seems like you're off to a good start.

Look forward to getting to know you and thanks for joining the community.

KristineS
07-24-2009, 09:19 AM
Welcome to the forum. We're glad to have you here.

rezzy
07-24-2009, 11:30 AM
Hello and welcome. Jump into the conversations or start you own.

prova.fm
07-24-2009, 08:53 PM
Welcome. It's good to see that you've started. I learned something when I read the Subway book, called Ready, Fire, Aim. I was the type who waited too long to start. I'm learning now to fire, then aim & fire again... ;)

vangogh
07-24-2009, 09:16 PM
Count me in the waiting too long to start group. Took me awhile to realize I was better off learning as I went along instead of trying to learn it all before getting started.

howtechhelpsbiz
07-25-2009, 10:13 PM
Thanks for the tips and advice (and warning that I still had WP default text :eek: )

I've made a few changes to the site, still have to draw attention to where I want people to subscribe.

Let me know what you think!

vangogh
07-25-2009, 11:17 PM
One thing I just noticed is you have a page called "Request Valued Information" I'm not sure what that means. What's the valued information and why do I want it. On the page itself you ask people what they think the value of the information is and also what they want to know. The page doesn't really make sense. It comes across as you hoping people will tell you what they want and I can't see anyone doing that unless you give them a reason to.

If you have some real information to give people tell them what it is. If you just want to get information about them find another way to do that.

cbscreative
07-31-2009, 05:32 PM
Welcome aboard from the south of you in Michigan. The one request I have is could you please take our Govornor back? You don't have to vote her into any office, just extradite her before our state is completely empty, except for highway workers and state employees.

I'm not looking to hijack your intro thread, just hoping you can pull some strings to spare us further grief. Hey, a guy can hope, can't he?

howtechhelpsbiz
08-02-2009, 04:07 PM
I made a change to the request information form and hopefully it's purpose is a bit more clear.

vangogh
08-02-2009, 11:43 PM
I think I understand what the form is for. I take it that you would like people to suggest ideas for content you can write. It's a good idea to write content your audience specifically wants. There are two issues I see with the contact form.

You ask "What you think the value of this information is"

I'm not sure what the point of asking that is or what information you hope to get. The value is going to be it's something someone wants to know. The wording is also confusing. I realize you're writing it so it's not a question, but it reads as though you forget to include the word 'do' after 'What'

The second thing is I don't think this is going to be the best way to get people to tell you what information they want to know. I have a hard time seeing people filling out a form to suggest content. The act of filling out the form doesn't really benefit anyone other than you. You may think the benefit is that the person filling out the form will eventually have the information they want, but it's not a direct benefit. I doubt people will take the time to fill out a form like this until you've built a relationship with them in some way.

A better approach would be to have a blog and as you build a readership periodically ask people if there's anything they'd like to see you write about or run a poll every now and then. You'll have a built a relationship though the blog and it's comments.

As it is now you're basically asking strangers to generate content ideas for you and I don't think they'll do that.

howtechhelpsbiz
08-03-2009, 12:14 AM
Very good points. I have to remember that anything the user does needs to benefit them in some way...and usually immediately.

vangogh
08-03-2009, 01:36 AM
I think you'll find if you ask questions in your blog posts either relating to the individual post or on occasion having the post itself be the question you'll end up with better results.

You can also sign up for a service like Skribit (http://skribit.com/), which gives you a widget you can add to your WordPress blog. Skribit is a simple widget. It will show essentially as a suggestion box where your readers can leave suggestions about what they want to see you write about. Building a relationship with your readers and having the widget always there will probably be a better way to get suggestions.