From the Desk of Janet Barclay

I started this blog nearly two years ago, after hearing Leesa Barnes speak about blogging at the Professional Organizers in Canada Conference. I chose Blogsome as my platform because it had all the features I wanted at the time, and it was easy to use. Since then, I’ve set up a number of sites using WordPress, both for Organized Assistant and for clients, and as I’ve become more aware of its capabilities and possibilities, I’m no longer satisfied with my current blog. As a result, this will be my final entry here, but I hope you’ll visit my new blog at http://www.janetbarclay.com.

If you use an RSS reader, you’ll need to update your feed. And if you prefer to receive information by email, you’ll be happy to know that I am now offering email subscriptions as well.

See you on the other side!

If your work slows down in the summer, it may be the ideal time to work on projects you couldn’t fit into your schedule earlier in the year, as suggested in my article Six Ways to Make the Most of Summer Downtime. One such project is checking your website for broken links. If your website visitors click on links only to find that the sites or pages no longer exist, they may feel that it’s not worth sticking around to check out the rest of your site. There are a number of tools that will automate the process of locating broken links, but sometimes that is not enough. For example, a link that leads to a "Page Not Found" will most likely register as a broken link, but if it leads to an Error Page, your link checker may not recognize that as a dead link.

Yesterday Scott was working on a client project that required him to collect some information from her website. When he clicked on one of links to an external website, he discovered that the target site had been hijacked, so instead of bringing up someone’s blog, it brought up a porn site. Even worse, if he clicked on the Back button, instead of returning to our client’s site, it went to yet another porn site. We immediately deleted the link from the site, but of course we have no way of knowing how long it was like that. Not only did this situation present a risk of seriously offending our client’s website visitors, it could have damaged her search engine positioning, as Google’s Webmaster Guidelines clearly state that your ranking may be adversely affected by links to "bad neighbourhoods."

If you thought that checking your links was a low priority task, think again! You need to make time for this project, especially if you have a lot of outgoing links. And if you can’t fit it into your schedule, or you just don’t enjoy that type of work, maybe you need an Organized Assistant!

Last week I reported on the number of blogs people read per week, according to my recent survey, and today I’ll share the responses to the question How do you keep track of them?

The answers were as follows:

The numbers total more than 100% because participants were allowed to choose more than one answer. At first glance the number of people skipping the question seems high, but not when you factor in the fact that 37% of participants stated that they don’t read blogs on a regular basis.

Under "Other" a few people wrote "I don’t" and one wrote "Just through doing a search or recommendations." In addition, the following online tools were named:

• Google alert
• Netvibes
• Twitter
• Bloglines
• Feed Reader
• del.icio.us

I recently started using My Yahoo as my RSS reader and have found it to be much more efficient than using my blogroll or my Bookmarks for keeping track of the blogs I read, because:

(a)  I can see at a glance which blogs have been updated, so I don’t waste time going to the sites, only to find there’s nothing new to read

(b)  it’s my start page when I go on the Internet, so I don’t have to remember to check them

The one drawback I’m experiencing is that I can’t organize the blogs into categories. I can re-arrange them on the page, but I’d like to be able to file them on the fly, the way I can with my Bookmarks.  A quick glance at the tools mentioned by my survey participants makes me think that Bloglines or Feed Reader might be just what I’m looking for, but I’d love to receive feedback on these tools, or any other suggestions you may have.

*This post was featured in the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival #6

Today I’m going to share the responses to another question I asked in my recent Online Marketing and Networking Survey, How many blogs do you read one or more times a week?

Since such a high number of survey participants stated that they blog regularly, I was surprised to see that more than a third don’t read blogs at all, with a comparable number reading five or fewer per week. On the other hand, we have twice as many people professing to reading more than 10 blogs per week than are reading 6-10 per week! Of course, these numbers don’t take all the contributing factors into account. For example, someone might follow 8 blogs on a regular basis, but some of the bloggers don’t post every week, so they end up reading only 5 per week.

I have no data to support this, but I suspect that once people "get into" blogging (and by that I don’t mean just posting, but regularly following other blogs and actively participating in the blog community), the number of blogs they read increases. If my theory is correct, these numbers will change dramatically over the next year or two.

I recently had the pleasure of reading Love Every Leaf, The Life of Landscape Architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander by Kathy Stinson. Perhaps you are wondering what interest the stepmother of two grown children might have in reading a biography written primarily for young people, and why this particular book - unless of course you already know that the author is my sister, and one of my clients. While she was writing this book, to maximize the use of her time, she had me conduct some of the research into the historical background, and I was very eager to see how she wove these facts into the story. That in itself was quite exciting to me personally.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, maybe you’re wondering why I’ve decided to write about this in my blog. Why would this book interest you, as a small business owner? Well, let me tell you!

While studying landscape architecture at Smith College nearly 70 years ago, Cornelia learned "3 P’s" that would benefit any of us to keep in mind:

1. Be Patient. People often need time to come round to your way of thinking.
2. Be Persistent. Stand up for what you know is right.
3. Be Polite. People are more likely to be convinced by your arguments if you present them in a pleasant manner.

During her impressive career, she added two more "Ps" to her arsenal which also contributed to her success. Can you guess what they were? If not, I highly recommend that you read Love Every Leaf! In addition to finding the answer to this question; you’ll be fascinated to learn about this amazing woman who has contributed so much to the world, and continues to do so in her 80s.

*This post was featured in the Virtual Assistant/Home Business Blog Carnival #4