It was a headache with trying to process orders and manage customers when there was no way to view the actual orders, much less the payment information.

If you’ve ever experienced this same problem, you’ve probably pulled out your hair, fighting with the customer support personnel of your website hosting company, probably getting nowhere (because truth be told, most of them don’t really know what they are doing beyond what they were trained to do).

A Solution To Your Website Viewing Issue

If you’re having this problem and white-listing your public IP address doesn’t help, then the problem has nothing to do with the server settings your website is hosted on.

The problem most likely lies with the name servers owned by your internet service provider.  When an internet service provider’s nameservers aren’t resolving IP addresses to their respective host names, this prevents you from seeing your website.

To fix this issue, simply following the steps outlined below:

1. Click your “Start” menu (Windows Orb on the taskbar of Windows 7 & Vista).
2. Select Control Panel.
3. Double-Click Network & Sharing Center or Network Connections Icon.
4. Click to Open “Local Area Connection”
5. Click “Properties”
6. Choose Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4), then click “Properties”
7. Click the radio button that  says “Use the following DNS server addresses” and type in one of the below listed IP addresses in the “Preferred DNS Server” and “Alternate DNS Server” fields.
8. Click the OK button, the close all of the open windows.
9. Click on your “Start Menu” again.
10. Click “Run” on Windows Vista or earlier, or type the following into the search field in Windows 7.
11. Type cmd & hit the enter key.
12. Type ipconfig /flushdns
13. When it says that your DNS has been successfully flushed, close the window.
14. You should be able to access your website via your preferred internet browser.

If you’re not using Windows, you can find a list of steps to following here:

www.opendns.com

List of Available DNS IP Addresses

You can use any of these available IP addresses you want.  It doesn’t matter who your internet service provider is.  I’d recommend OpenDNS over any of the others.

OpenDNS

• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220

Genuity

• 4.2.2.1
• 4.2.2.2

Level3

• 209.244.0.3
• 209.244.0.4

DNSAdvantage

• 156.154.70.1
• 156.154.71.1

Google

• 8.8.8.8
• 8.8.4.4

DynDNS Internet Guide

• 216.146.35.35
• 216.146.36.36

Have you ever had any issues like this?  How did you solve the problem?

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All of these social media spaces have two things in common:

1. They are being used to leverage awareness of a brand or product.
2. They are most often being used in the wrong way.

The Wrong Way To Use Social Media

With the overwhelming growth of social media, major corporations like McDonald’s, BestBuy, and Dell are creating accounts to interface with potential and already existing customers.

The sad part is that most companies using social media just don’t get it.  They are promoting their products but not taking the time to engage in conversation with their customers.

Social Media is a place to build and foster relationships for so much more than forcing your product on everyone with whom you come in contact.

The real reason companies are getting it wrong is because they are bundling social media with their marketing department.

Social Media is so much more than marketing, and the two should never be paired together as one group in a company.

If companies want to be successful with social media, their best bet is to create a social media position or even team, and hire those of us with experience in creating and maintaining those relationships.

Look at Crocs.  They are a company that understands social media enough to know that they didn’t understand social media.  And hired someone for the sole purpose of running the social media side of the house.

The Right Way To Use Social Media

If you really want to use social media correctly, hire an expert and let them run the show.  But if you can’t afford and expert, here are some simple guidelines to follow that will help you tremendously, at least until you figure it out.

1. Never forget that social media is about person-to-person connections. You are not speaking as “the company”, but as an individual within that company. Many companies don’t know how to do this, and it takes a lot of practice to find that voice and feel comfortable with it.
2. Be a good listener. All companies say they listen to their customers, but do they really LISTEN and let people know that they are listening by responding?
3. Be patient. This takes a long time because you are going to be transforming your company, one person at a time.
4. Be opportunistic. Start small with the people who are most passionate about building relationships with customers.
5. Be flexible. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to constantly adjust your thinking and learn.
6. Be collaborative. You need people from up and down the management chain to buy-in.
7. Be humble. Remember that you are not as influential as your community. If you forget this, they will let you know.

Are You Social Networking or Social Notworking?

If you aren’t sure which it is you’re doing, it’s as simple as asking your community.  People are very opinionated and they will not hold back in telling you whether you’re doing it right or wrong.

This goes back to the step on listening.  If you can keep your mouth closed for a moment and truly listen, you’ll hear things you’ve never heard before.

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While I’m not extremely impressed with it yet, I can foresee some big uses for Google Wave coming about.

1. Forum Integration

With Google Wave’s ability to imbed Waves into existing websites and allow for comments within each embedded wave, this could be a very awesome change for forums.

Currently, in order to reply to a thread in a forum, you have to register for that forum, type your reply then wait for the page to refresh in order to see it posted.  And if others are posting comments at the same time, you could miss conversation posted while posting your own.

Google Wave allows you to reply to each individual sentence and see all comments and threads as they are typed, in real time.  It will also allow you to read the forum and make comments via your Google Wave account, so you can participate in many different forums from one location.

Forum participation has declined since the creation of blogs, but I think forums will make a huge comeback with the implementation of Google Wave.

2. Blog Integration

Much like forum integration, using Google Wave to imbed your posts onto your blog will allow other Wave users to add to the content (much like a wiki), and hold a conversation dynamically with other blog readers.

This integration could help increase your blog community by allowing you to interact with your readers as they visit your new posts.

The only downside I see to using Google Wave for your blog posts is those who try to add to your content that don’t know anything about the topic. And it could cause less visitors to your actual blog, meaning those advertisements you have will not be seen.

Sponsored Conversation, much like that created through Izea’s new Sponzai, will be the future of making money through your blog when Google Wave starts being implemented.

3. Education Integration

Google Wave will make a huge impact on education.

The ability to collaborate as a team will help promote a better learning environment and a place for students to work together to solve problems whether at school or at home.

Students will also have the chance to continue asking the teacher questions and receive help after school hours, through shared waves.

I think education will have the biggest opportunity for change using Google Wave!

4. Conference & Team Integration

Because Google Wave allows for real time communication between individuals, it will make amazing headway for company teams working together on a single project as well as conferencing.

Virtual businesses will be able to communicate with each other on projects much easier and give them a better chance of surviving against brick and mortar businesses.

This will also allow companies to save money by converting their employees to a telecommute position and decreasing electric, water, and so many other costs involved in operating a physcial business.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but with the popularity of social media websites and blogging, it has become something few do anymore.

In the past couple of years it has started making a comeback.  But it’s difficult for those new to email marketing to really get involved because they aren’t sure of how to create amazing content for those email lists that are being created.

With Google Wave, email marketers will be able to send out truly dynamic emails and respond to questions and comments as they are asked. This will also allow everyone in the email list to see and questions and answers based on the material and could possibly persuade them into performing a desired action based on an issue they may have had but was cleared up by someone else.

If the product is good enough, it could also help to build trust between the email marketer and the client by allowing them to see real-time testimonies and compliments.

There are probably many other ways Google Wave will make an impact, but I see these as the biggest uses for Google Wave.

What uses to you envision for Google Wave?

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So I’ve come up with a real world analogy to better understand how Twitter can only work if used correctly… through real conversation.

3 Major Uses Of Twitter

There are 3 ways you can use twitter.  Each producing a much different outcome than the other.  But only one of these 3 uses of twitter will produce the outcome you desire, unless you’re some kind of psycho stalker.

Here’s the scenario:

“You just got off work and you’re on your way to the local sports bar for a drink and to check out the local hotties.  As you’re enjoying your beer at the bar, you spot the most amazing girl you’ve ever seen.  You’ve got 3 things you can do…”

1. Observe & Leave Alone

You prop yourself up against the bar and whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine!” Then you continue to watch her all night, never making a move to go speak to her.  Eventually she leaves with another guy, and you go home to spend more time with no one but yourself.

In this scenario, you are observing.  The relation to twitter is simply watching others have a conversation.  You don’t choose to follow anyone, or participate in a real conversation, you scan others profiles and read about what they have to say to each other.

2. Make A Feeble Attempt At Being Social

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn, she is fine,” and take a shot of whiskey.  Then you scribble your number down on a scrap piece of paper, non-chalantly make your way over to her, and without a single word, slip your number into her back pocket.  She doesn’t even notice, and again, you go home to spend time with yourself.

In this scenario, you make an attempt at being social, but in the wrong way. The relation to twitter is following others, never saying a word to those you follow, and blasting out your latest product or offering every chance you get.

3. Engage In Real Conversation

You prop yourself up against the bar, whisper quietly to yourself, “Damn she is fine,” take a shot of whiskey, and walk boldy up to her.  As she makes eye contact you say, “Your eyes are as blue as window cleaner.”  It’s probably not the best thing you could have said, but you’re trying, and she giggles.

You spend the rest of the night talking about both of your likes, dislikes, your careers, and anything else that comes to mind.  You being a relationship and she’ll remember you the rest of her life.

In this scenario, your akward attempt at making a real attempt at connecting work.  And this time it may have been akward, but as you do it more and more, it will become second nature, and you’ll find yourself becoming more and more successful each time.

The relation to twitter is following others, but making an attempt at engaging in conversation with each and every person you follow.

When you truly care about what others have to say and join in the conversation, you’ll notice that others will come from all over because they want to be a part of that conversation.

Being real, causes others to realize that there is more behind a company, product, or service than the cold corporate exterior.  They soon will realize that you are just as real as they are.  You laugh, hurt, sing, and cry just like they do.

Twitter is exactly like a sports bar.  What you make of it, will determine what it makes of you! Rather than asking others to follow us on Twitter, shouldn’t we be asking them to join us in conversation?

So how do you use Twitter?  Are you engaging in conversation and listening to what others have to say, or using it as another tool to talk about yourself?

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So here is a way to get your Twitter Replies sent directly to your email, so you can still be a part of the conversation even at event conferences and when you’re on the road.

1. Find Your Twitter Reply Feed

When you look at your Twitter Replies page, you’ll notice there isn’t a link to your RSS feed.  But with a little searching, I found the link.  Actually I hit view page source and copy and pasted the url.

But when you do this, a popup asks you for a username and password. Don’t worry about entering it, you don’t need to do this.

Here’s the url, it’s the same for everyone, so this should work for you:

http://twitter.com/statuses/replies.rss

2. Put Your Twitter Reply Feed Into Notify.Me

Go to notify.me, make sure you’re signed in (if you don’t have an account, then you need to register), and paste the above url into the url box under the sources tab.

Before hitting “Add Site” you need to modify the Reply Feed url.

Because you replies are password protected, you have to add your username and password to the url. Here’s the format you need to use (make sure you include the colon between the username and password:

http://username:password@twitter.com/statuses/replies.css

When your feed has been aquired by notify.me, you’ll see it listed below the url textbox.  Click the Email icon to the right of the Feed title.

You’re All Done

That is all there is to receiving your Twitter replies via email.  This saves my butt so much when an important tweet is sent to me and I’m not anywhere near my computer.

I also plan on using this to keep in the conversation at IzeaFest this year.

There are also other ways to do this using FriendFeed, Yahoo Pipes, and others.

What tool do you use to get your Twitter replies via email?

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And in our excitement to try to be like them, we often do just that. But what works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another.

The best way to stand out is to be yourself.

Be original in everything you do.  Don’t add something to your blog’s sidebar because your favorite blogger did it.

All of us have different personalities.  Different likes, dislikes, and hobbies.  So why try to be like someone else?

Our originality is what makes us stand out.  And at the end of the day, there is only YOU.  People will like you for who you really are, not who you pretend to be.

So be yourself, and you’ll be surprised at just how much you will stand out.

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But with no explanation of how to do it, I realize it may have left some of you wishing they would have done a demo.  So for those of you who may not understand how to use Yahoo Pipes, here’s a step-by-step guide to building your ego feed with Yahoo Pipes.

Creating A Yahoo Pipes Account

To create a Yahoo Pipes account, simply visit http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/ and click “Create a Pipe”.  If you’re not logged into yahoo with your yahoo id, then you need to login.  If you do not have a yahoo pipes account, you obviously need to create one then return to Yahoo Pipes and go from there.

Setting Up Your Yahoo Pipes  Canvas

When you click “Create a Pipe” and have logged in with your Yahoo Id, you’ll see a screen like the following and will be utterly confused as to what you’re supposed to do.

From this screen, click on the plus sign beside “Feed Auto-Discovery” in the left hand panel under “Sources”, and drag the box that shows up to another location on your canvas.  Do this 2 more times.

Then click the plus sign beside the “Fetch Feed” button which is just under the “Feed Auto-Discovery” button.  Drage the box to a blank location on your canvas.  Then do this one more time.

Now choose the “Operators” category and click the plus sign beside “Union”.

Now click the plus sign beside “Sort”.

When all of these steps are complete you should have a workspace that looks something like this:

Grabbing Your Many Ego Feeds

There are so many places that you can use to find what people are saying about you and your brand it’s often-times hard to keep track of them all.  So we’re only starting with the most popular places and you can always add more later.

1. Google Blog Search

Simply visit http://blogsearch.google.com/ and type the following in the search box: link:www.yourdomain.com

Then copy the url in your browser’s address bar and paste it into one of your “Feed Auto-Discovery” boxes on your Yahoo Pipes canvas.

2. Yahoo Search

Visit www.yahoo.com and type the following in the search box: link:www.yourdomain.com

Choose “Except from this domain” in the “Show Inlinks” option. And choose “Entire Site” from the “to” dropdown option.

Then copy the url in your browser’s address bar and paste it into one of your “Feed Aut0-Discovery” boxes on your Yahoo Pipes canvas.

3. Bing Search

Visit www. bing.com and type the following in the search box: “www.yourdomain.com” -site:www.yourdomain.com

Then copy the url in your browser’s address bar and paste it into one of your “Feed Aut0-Discovery” boxes on your Yahoo Pipes canvas.

4. Twingly

Visit www.twingly.com and type the following in the search box: link:www.yourdomain.com

Click the “Subscribe to RSS” link on the right side of the results window.

Then copy the url in your browser’s address bar and paste it into one of your “Fetch Feed” boxes on your Yahoo Pipes canvas.

5. Twitter Search

Visit http://search.twitter.com and search for any words that would pertain to you, such as “@yourusername“.

In the results window, click the “Feed for this query” option on the right.

Then copy the url in your browser’s address bar and paste it into one of your “Fetch Feed” boxes on your Yahoo Pipes canvas.

To add more search results from Twitter simply click the plus sign beside “URL” in your “Fetch Feed” box to add another line to paste an additional url.  You can do this an unlimited number of times.

Finalizing Your Yahoo Pipes Creation

In your “Sort” box, type “item.pubDate” and choose “Descending” for the order.  This will sort your results by the publish date and display them newest first.

Then click on the small circles under each “Feed” box and connect a line to the circles on top of the “Union” box.

When all circles are connected, connect the bottom circle of the “Union” box to the top circle of the “Sort” box and finally from the bottom circle of the “Sort” box to the top circle of the “Pipe Output” box.

Your Yahoo Pipes creation is now complete and it’s time to save and get your feed.  Your creation should look something like this:

Grabbing Your Yahoo Pipes RSS Feed

Click the save button in the upper right of the canvas workspace and choose a name for your feed.

When your creation is saved you will see an option that says “Run pipe…” at the top of your browser window.  Click this link and your pipe will run.

Then choose the subscribe option you want on the created page.

That’s all there is to it.  It takes some time and a little effort, but from now on, anything anyone says about you or your brand will be sent to your feed reader.

You can also perform other searches in each search engine for your desired search terms and add them to your “Feed Auto-Discovery” boxes as well.

Have fun and let me know if this was a big help for you in creating your own Ego Feed.

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Social Media is different from mass media like television and radio, and should be treated as such.

Using Social Media The Right Way

Social media is for building relationships.  Meaningful, deeper relationships with a small group of people at a time.  If you try to target more than a handful of people at once, you will spread yourself too thin and the relationship will not be as strong.

If you’ve ever been to a physical networking conference like BlogHer, Affiliate Summit, or IzeaFest, you probably noticed that while you talked to literally hundreds of people, there were only those 4-5 that you really connected with.

Social media acts in the same way.  You can only successfully make great connections with 4-5 people at a time.

Focus on building deeper more meaningful relationships rather than building huge followers that end up being shallow.

The deeper relationships you build will result in readers that love everything you write just because you wrote it.  Those readers will then talk about you to the friends that trust them and recommend your blog all the time.

This is a real word of mouth marketing technique that results in a larger, more dedicated following and a more trustworthy community.

Mass Twitter Follower Tools Are The Wrong Approach

Instead of signing up for the mass twitter following tools like TwitterFollower that increase your followers by hundreds and sometimes thousands, try steering clear.

They are great if all you want to do is build a marketing list of people, but you shouldn’t be using Twitter or other social media sites to simply promote your stuff.  If you do, people will stop following you, most likely block you, and sometimes report you as spam.

A Social Media Challenge

I challenge you to pick 5 people on the social media sites you use and really connect with them.  Start a conversation and continue that conversation for weeks, month, and years.

Build those relationships and after a couple of weeks of building the relationship, pick 5 more people and do the same thing.

You’ll be surprised at the results.

What are your thoughts on building deeper more meaningful relationships?  Do you focus on it, or do you tend to promote yourself to thousands of shallower relationships?

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The layout and functions of wordpress itself was created by bloggers just like you.

But as powerful as WordPress is as a blogging platform, what makes it even more powerful is its versatility.

The Versatility of WordPress

With it’s powerful plugin feature and it’s easiness to be modified via the actual open source code, wordpress can be used as more than a blogging platform.

It can be used as a CMS (Content Management System) for a static company website.

By simply modifying the themes style sheet and some of the open source code, you can have a fully functional website developed in a day with the only thing left being the adding of the actually page content (of which the client can do).

The Benefits of Using WordPress When Building Websites

• Websites that used to take weeks to build can now be built in a matter of 2-3 days.
• Clients can edit the content of each page by themselves very easily rather than having the developer make every word change.
• The plugins offered allow for faster development of key website components such as web forms, newsletter subscriptions, search engine optimzation, and so much more.
• It makes the client feel like they are more in control of their website.
• It causes the client to feel better about the development since they actually get to have a hand in the process.
• And so much more…

Real World Example

I actually used WordPress to build a website for the first time this past week for a client, and what would normally have taken 2-3 weeks ended up only taking 2-3 days.

The client had previously been with a web development company that fought with them on changes and development for over a year and no CMS.  So imagine their surprise when I have a fully functioning website for them in 3 days, content added and all.

If you develop websites, I highly recommend you start using wordpress.  You will impress your clients with how quickly you finish the work.

Here’s a screenshot of the website which was built on the default wordpress theme with very minimal stylesheet and code changes:

How do you feel about using WordPress to build websites?  If you have any other benefits I’d love to hear them.

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But creating content has always been a long and sometimes tedious task that we could really only rely on ourselves to create.  So what if there was a way your readers (or commentators) could create that additional content for you?  And I’m not talking about guest posting!

Let Commentators Create Your Content

A very new and intriguing plugin just emerged in the WordPress plugins codex and unlike most of the plugins that are added, it is extremely useful.

The plugin is called SEO Super Comments, and all it does is create separate, index-able pages from the comments readers leave on your blog.  These comment “pages” contain keyword rich H1 titles based on the content of the comment as well as links to other comments left by that specific commentator.  Thus creating links back to old posts on your blog, and also increasing blog stickiness.

For a good example, click on the author’s name of any of the comments left on this blog.

Supersize My Content Please

If you are like most bloggers, you probably have 4-5 times as many comments as you do posts.  So by dynamically creating a page for every comment on your blog which all contain links to other posts on your blog, you are literally increasing your indexable content by 4-5 times as much.

The power of this plugin is phenominal, and if you aren’t using it, I suggest you start.  It’s free so why not!?!

You can download the SEO Super Comments plugin here and you can learn more about the concept behind the plugin here.

What are your thoughts on this plugin?  Are you using it?  If so, I’d love to hear how it has affected your blog!

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