This morning I was reading through an invitation to a webinar and I thought… “WOW, this email is horrible!”.

Several issues that I saw:

1. It said little to nothing about the speaker. “And why should I trust what this speaker has to say?“
2. It said practically nothing about the topic of the webinar. “What it’s in it for me?“
3. The sender actually compared herself to the speaker… and won. “Well, if you are better, then why bother listening to him?“
4. You had to go to her website to get the webinar time, date and logon. “Don’t make me jump through hoops!“

Well, I probably won’t attend this webinar, but I definitely learned something from it.

::ToddS
DW Kickstart - Learn to build and market your own website

Recently I was asked my opinion about a new slogan someone had come up with for their company. While I did think it was very clever, I wasn’t sure that clever was the best approach.

Personally I believe some of the best slogans make sense even out of context. The slogan that always comes to mind for me is:

• Federal Express - “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.“

A few more to illustrate this:

• Kentucky Fried Chicken - “Finger Licken Good.“
• BMW - “The Ultimate Driving Machine.“
• British Airways - “The world’s favourite airline.“
• Burger King - “Have It Your Way.“

So if someone only saw your name and your slogan what would they be able to conclude from that alone.

::ToddS
DW Kickstart - Learn to build and market your own website

If you are a non-techy kind of person then name your home page either index.html or index.htm and skip the rest of this article. That should work 99% of the time for you.

Still here…?

Okay, let’s start by saying that for the most part it doesn’t matter which combination of default, index, html, or htm you use. These are just settings on the web server and can be modified.

Default and Index are the two common default directory documents. Meaning that if you don’t tell the server specifically what web page to load, it will check that directory to see if one of those two files exist and load it.

IE If your default document is index.html and you type http://www.dwkickstart.com it will load http://www.dwkickstart.com/index.html.
(more…)

I get asked that question a lot it seems, and it’s kind of a loaded question. My answer is usually, “It depends.”.

But actually, after you build a couple of websites you will find that for the most part they have the same basic framework and most websites are the same steps repeated over and over.

So building a website using Dreamweaver might look something like this:

1. Purchase Domain Name
2. Purchase Hosting
3. Create a FTP account
4. Setup a Adobe Dreamweaver site definition
5. Create page design in Adobe Fireworks
6. Convert page design to Dreamweaver template
7. Create new page using template
8. Push web page to web server
9. Test in multiple browsers
10. Repeat steps 7-9 until website is complete

That might seem like a lot of steps, but you will find that none of them are particularly hard. Especially after you have had a bit of practice.

Over the next couple of days I will break those steps down for you so they don’t seem so daunting.

If you just focus on one piece at a time, you will have your site up and running in no time.

::ToddS
DW Kickstart - Learn to build and market your own website

Member question: “What can you tell me about Second Life and how you view it as a web marketing environment?”

Actually I am quite familiar with Second Life [SL] and have been a regular player going on two years now. In SL I am pretty much considered an ancient.

I originally joined Second Life for the possible business opportunities but it didn’t take me long to give up on that and just start playing it for recreation.

While there are some very powerful features to Second Life it can still be a very difficult group to market to.

Pros:

• Extremely interactive, very close to one on one
• Few limitations on product creation or marketing strategy (Not a lot of rules in SL)
• It is possible to tie your Real Life [RL] products and SL products together.
• You can adjust your strategy very quickly
• Very diverse player demographic
• International player base

Cons:

• Very hard to “Get the word out” about your product or market
• Difficult at best to track your traffic and demographic
• Very easy for someone to mimic or outright steal your products and strategy
• Very fickle group and Second Lifers get bored quickly
• Products and businesses don’t always translate well into the SL environment
• Can be difficult to get repeat visitors
• While you can make money, and even a lot of money in SL, the exchange rate is pretty weak.

Sounds a lot like traditional internet marketing doesn’t it?!

In the Members section, I discuss possible strategies for marketing in this medium.

Resources:

• Second Life

::ToddS
DW Kickstart - Learn to build and market your own website