Today I discovered a great little polling tool from www.vizu.com. It’s another way for you to get feedback from your audience on your product/service, your blog - almost anything. Check it out by answering my cheeky test poll below:

Opinion Polls & Market Research

It struck me that this would be a great tool used in conjunction with Twitter. Often hot debates/chats happen on Twitter, and you could v quickly set up a free account at www.vizu.com, design your poll, post it on your blog, and link to it from one of your Tweets. Hence you could get a rush of traffic to your blog, and pick up some subscriptions at the same time. Hmmm - I’m going to try that! Watch this space…

Today I did a Google check to see if my Juicy Onion Blog i360 had increased its page rank for the keyword phrase, “Gina Couper”. This follows on from my last investigations in this series, one week ago on 7 May, where my Blog i360 ranked at Number 2.

To my delight, today I am displaying at Number 1, now beating the New Zealand Herald, New Zealand’s premiere news site!

The only actions I have taken to improve the ranking of my blog over this past week is to publish two posts (the ones on 7 & 8 May) as well as 4 comments.

This just goes to illustrate how powerful the Blog i360 system is in helping you dominate the search results on Google. The Blog i360’s structure is optimized for the search engines in a multitude of ways, making optimization of the search engines (SEO) for business owners like yourself very simple.

One small example of this is a function I am using for the first time in this post, the “In Series” function (see bottom of this post, “Previous in series”). This enables you to cross link between any related posts in your Blog i360. Creating a blog that is rich in keyword relevant cross-links like this not only makes it easier for your readers to follow relevant information, it also gets you some extra Google Juice.

Number 1 already, and I haven’t even set up my landing page or activated my social bookmarking robot yet!

Gina Couper.

PS. You can get your own Blog i360 here.

Previous in series

What are the first basic steps you need to take towards getting your Blog i360 looking good enough to eat and giving your visitors a remarkable experience?

To do:

1) Get rid of the login and register options on the right hand nav bar (visitors find these confusing and plus they just look average)

2) Insert a new footer with your company contact details (visitors need to know they are dealing with a real company that they can trust)

3) Add an “About” page that tells your visitors who you are, your story (I’ve actually already done this)

4) If, like me, you don’t want a blogroll (or list of links to other sites), remove it. Personally I don’t want to tempt people to leave my site.

5) IMPORTANT: Set up your aweber box in the left hand nav bar - this will allow visitors to sign up for your email blog broadcast. This is how you grow your list - critical in the success of your blog and your business. While your Blog i360 offers your visitors a choice of RSS feeds on the left hand nav bar already, many people do prefer to subscribe to an email newsletter.

Here’s a screen shot of my Juicy Onion blog, after my first post and before I execute my To Do list:

That’s it for now. See you on the other side!

Gina Couper

Have you Googled your own name and company name recently? These words are the basic keyphrases your target audience will search when trying to hook up with you, or research you online, so you need to pay close attention…

Today I did two simple Google checks - one on “Gina Couper” and the other on “Juicy Onion”. At the time of checking, I had published just one post and one page on my Juicy Onion Blog i360. I wanted to know, “How does my Blog i360 page rank on Google compare to my page ranks for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and ZoomInfo?”

As you will see below for “Gina Couper”, my Juicy Onion Blog i360 already enjoys a page rank of 2, just behind results from the New Zealand Herald (one of NZ’s leading news sites enjoying massive link equity). Interestingly, for the keyphrase “Juicy Onion” (not shown here), I show up Number 1 – ahead of amazon.com, theonion.com, chowhound.com and ehow.com – all established sites with much higher traffic volumes!

So my Blog i360 did good, very good. But where is my Facebook ranking, pray tell?

One of the reasons Facebook is touted as one of the best hangouts online, is that it is supposed to enjoy high page ranking. However, as at today, for “Gina Couper”, Google displays no Facebook results whatsoever! I admit, I have only been active on Facebook for just over a month. Could it be that Google hasn’t even indexed my Facebook profile yet?

In contrast though, remember it was just a week and a half ago that I did my first Juicy Onion post, and I am already showing up big time.What about LinkedIn, then? I’m showing at Number 8 – a whole 6 ranks down from my Blog i360 results. Having been active on LinkedIn since October 2005 (more than 2 years), that’s a little underwhelming in comparison.

ZoomInfo’s “Gina Couper” results are nowhere to be seen. Once upon a time, I did show up here prominently – don’t know what happened. No my account hasn’t gone AWOL. It’s just that nobody can find it. Which in effect is the same thing really, isn’t it?

As a Twitter newbie (on board for only around 3 weeks) I have no ranking either. But I have heard great things on this via the Twitter grapevine so will keep my eyes peeled.I love Facebook for business, but who’s got more than a month to wait to show up in the search engines? If Woody Allen said, “Eighty percent of success is showing up”, then I’d have to add to that, “- quickly”!

Moral of the story? If you want to show up on Google in a juicy way, quickly, then get started with your own Blog i360. Don’t just leave it to social networking to get found.

Gina Couper.

PS. Leave me a comment and let me know what your questions about search engine optimisation (SEO) are. If you’re a business person, like me, learning about SEO is like pulling teeth! What stuff reaaaalllly frustrates you? What are you having trouble “getting”? I will endeavour to translate the Geek-speak for you. And I will break it to you gently.

Next in series

After over a year of boning up on business blogging and other new media and social networking tools, I’m finally doin’ it! Taking action with my very first post at my own business blog, here at Juicy Onion. Wooo-hooooo!

So what’s in it for you? Well, if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur new to the Internet and wanting to sell yourself online - maybe this will inspire and encourage you to give it a go…

Having previously worked at Amazon.co.uk and other high tech companies in the Internet space - why did it take me so damn long?

Firstly, transformation in the Internet - Web 2.0. Internet years are like dog years, and so much had changed during my 5 year maternal hibernation from the web, raising my two girls. I discovered that marketing on the Internet is no longer about dealing with and converting “eyeballs” (as we used to call them at Amazon) - or “Interruption Marketing”. Due to mankind’s never-ending, primal quest for connection and community, social networking platforms (blogs, Facebook, Twitter etc) have mushroomed. Doing business on the web is now about being yourself, telling your story, be-friending the right people, and dishing up something juicy, something of value that your new friends will buy into and rave about. In other words, the rulez have changed, matey-patatey.

Secondly, Mindset. Being away all those years focused on parenting my kids, I guess I lost confidence in myself as a business person. (Add to that moving country for the 4th time, hubby launching his own biz simultaneously, two active pre-schoolers and you get one interesting year). But this week I have been “in the zone”, “on a roll”, “on fire”. How’d I do that?…

After a few days playing around on Twitter as a newbie, it all came together in one big Tweeting epiphany:

Next, one of my new Twitter friends posted a link on their blog to Michael Port’s interview of mindset guru Jim Carson. Amazing! After listening, I became aware of my “inner gremlin” or limiting “self-talk”. I thanked my never-ending question for sharing (mine is, “Did I get it right/Am I doing it right?”). I realised it was just my gremlin who was the one asking, “Who would want to hear what you have to say?”, and “is what you have to say really that interesting, anyway?”.

Lastly, my sister Cathy invited me to a seminar by Prof Martin Seligman on positive psychology. I profiled my signature strengths (more on that next time). Wow: teamwork, leadership, creativity and curiosity came out tops. “Maybe I do have something to contribute to budding web marketers”, I thought to myself. The final boost I needed to get going!

So here I am, with you - sharing my journey as a New Media Marketer/Corporate Storyteller. I’ll be sharing my insights and the practical tools and mindset techniques that help me succeed in selling myself online. And in doing so, it might just inspire you to get going as well.

Ask yourself - “What self-talk am I buying into?”. Thank it for sharing, and create some space for your real voice to shine. When you do this, telling your story takes no energy, in fact it’s a buzz. Now, that’s what I call Juicy!

Let the fun begin,

Gina Couper.

PS. I acknowledge my new media marketing mentor, Coach Deb, who encouraged me to just do a little bit each day towards my goals, when I was in the world of “overwhelm”. And of course, for all of her and JP’s cutting edge info and tools.