My new site should be completed any day now.  I am still blogging, and using social networking sites such as Twitter, Squidoo, LinkedIn and a few others.  This past week has been pretty busy for me and I hope things will calm down in my personal life after the election. 

This past week…

1.  I have written several drafts for blog posts to be published in the next month.  I still need to write more.

2.  For SEO, I’m reading Building Findable Websites by Aaron Walter as an ebook through my local public library website.  Though I am not tech savvy, there are still principals in the book that I can adhere to one step at a time.  Reviews can be read here: Amazon reviews.

I still need to work on some of the other items from the list I created last week: I am still here

My current goals for October – December 2008:

• Update/upgrade the website. I really need to fix the HTML code and give a new look and feel.  This should be done by 10/31.
• Increase the number of blog posts to 2-3 a week.
• Make a rough outline of blog topics for the business blog.
• Offer a special free shipping promotion on the site after its updated.
• Make a solid holiday plan (business and personal).
• Update my short term goals for Green and Chic.
• Find ways to increase traffic to the site.

If you have any articles, blog posts or websites you want featured, or if you have any questions, send them to info@greenandchic.com

Last week, I found this great tool that has helped me save time so far: www.socialmarker.com

Basically, all you do is set up your accounts on various social bookmarking sites like Digg, Technorati, Twitter,  Del.icio.us or as many as you like  (see a complete list here), create a blog post, or article and this tool will help you submit to all of these websites in minutes without having to open additional windows or tabs. 

Before I found this, I didn’t even know half of theses social media sites existed.  It took a while to set up some of the accounts (I’ve only done eight so far), but once you get over that hump its all downhill from there. 

Using this tool, traffic to my blog and website increased three fold over the past week.

Though I love buying and loaning books from the library on business, ecommerce, writing, blogging, WordPress, you name it, I found that I have gotten the majority of business and ecommerce related information online: websites, forums and blogs.  Too much information in fact!

How do you sort it all out?  How do you know which direction to turn to?  I almost feel like I need a business partner (any takers??), but I will get some advice this weekend at my Webeneur group.

Sometime between now and next week, I will start adding products to my website after cleaning it up a bit.  I still need to format my blog to make it look more like the website itself, but since this is my first time with HTML, CSS, and WordPress.org, I lack the skill.  I’m also not exactly sure which direction to turn to or which products to start out with first.  I have an idea, but I keep changing my mind!

As I was composing this post (starting yesterday), I found just what I needed to read: Make a Decision!

That post has the answer!

This is not only about driving traffic to my blog, but writing content worth commenting about.  My problem is not driving traffic (though I can be better at that) but my lack of comments.  I guess writing more would be a good start.  I take it that readers and fellow bloggers wont be so inclined to come back if I only write once a month. 

Also, are my posts too “common”?  Am I writing on subjects that 1,000,000 other bloggers are writing or have already written about?  Even if that’s the case, how can I be more creative in my approach?  With my Green + Chic blog, its a little dicey since I want to keep the content as accurate as possible, but at the same time, I can put a little more of “me” into my writing.

Blogs I like that addresses those issues are:

http://www.problogger.net/
http://websuccessdiva.com/

There are more in my Blogroll and I’m adding to the list all the time.

So what do you do to keep ‘em coming?  What types of posts generate more interest and comments? What is that glue that make them stick?

I recently updated the Green + Chic blog that was formerly located on a WordPress.com platform. Its now connected to my site using Wordpres.org.  Exciting huh?

The problem is, I haven’t written much on my blog since I started it. I guess I am a bit timid when it comes to blog writing: fear of misspellings, grammatical errors, fear of not being exciting or dynamic enough, fear of disagreements with the content, and so on.  I read blogs by bloggers who know how to write good content, are clever and funny and can generate a large following.  Also, they have something to write about – all the time!  At least four days a week on average.  I’m good to write once a month.

How can I be a better blogger for my business, especially if the success of Green + Chic depends largely on my blogging skills to generate traffic? I checked out a book from the library (I really don’t need to buy more books right now) on the subject.  Hopefully this will give me the boost I need.

Clear Blogging by Bob Walsh

Also reading blogs is helpful for me too sometimes. The less I read, the less I write (and want to write).

Wish me luck!

I cant believe it already the end of summer!  I’ve been so busy with work and travel, I almost had to double check my calendar because I cant believe I was writing “September” in the title of this post.

In terms of the website, there has been a lot going on in my life that got in the way of my progress, (or that I have allowed to get in the way) but I did finally start a much needed site update, changed hosting, CMS and shopping cart providers this week.  The website has a completely different look now.

The hosting and CMS is with Pappashop (I wrote about it last month) and the cart is with Mal’s e-Commerce.  Though the site isn’t completely finished and my store isn’t officially opened, I’m glad I was able to complete that part so that I can move forward with offering products.

www.greenandchic.com

…where you wake up and look back at the past few weeks and wonder “what the hell have I been doing?”

Yep!  That’s where I’m am right now.  Between my full-time day job, planning trips for August and October, taking a much needed mini vacation off during the 4 July weekend,  sick for most of the month of June and  dealing with little stuff around the house, time just passed me by.  Unfortunately, not much work with greenandchic.com was accomplished.

Something I did discover despite my lack of G+C activity: I had to get away from Joomla.  That Content Management System is just not working for me at all.  Its not that difficult to learn Joomla with all of the Joomla based websites, forums, YouTube and books out there.  The problem is, Joomla as a software, tends to be pretty buggy at times.  I added the VirtueMart shopping cart and while its  easy to learn and manage, its still a bit buggy the on screen format seems to be “off” in a way. It just doesnt look quite right. Maybe its me and my lack of experience with CMS because Joomla does get rave reviews, but  its a big headache for me.

I found a new one that I just started on – Pappashop CMS and Mal’s e-Commerce shopping cart . The formatting and interface is much simpler to use and for someone who before now has NO experience with websites, this is a much better option to start.  I’m am able to use one of the free templates and modify it in HTML (I use BBEdit). Now I’m no HTML expert by any stretch of the imagination, so I’m taking it one step at a time and doing well with it.

OK, so its not like I’ve done nothing, just not as much as I would have liked.

On June 21st, I attended another all-day Webeneur event that gave me the boost and ideas I desperately needed to get this operation off the ground. 

I recently downloaded the free VirtueMart shopping cart software to my website and spent a few days playing around with it. It seems easy enough to use once I got the hang of it, but we’ll see how it will be once the site is live.

Other tasks included contacting new vendors, deciding on which products I would like feature first, getting my business banking and merchant account in order, renewing my business license and other miscellaneous tasks. 

I need to start blogging on my Green + Chic blog more, add the blog feature to my site, get a new (or used) laptop so I wont be so confined to working at home all the time, schedule more time in the evenings to work at this and network more – on and offline.