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Yep, you heard it! The Los Angeles Times published the article Facebook sues start-up for using ‘book’ in its name. The small site Teachbook.com is the target of being sued. This site helps give teachers a leg up with their job by providing valuable resources to manage classes.

Personally I think Facebook just picked the wrong fight. It is not an infringement of their idea as there are sites that have been up far longer than Facebook with ‘book’ in it. Is ‘book’ trademarked? Who knows. I am not about to go through the search to find out. ‘Facebook’ is though… so why waste money suing over something that has no grounds. Makes me want to ask – “Who was smoking the peyote before this decision came up?”

If Facebook has all this time to look after small websites that focus on a niche, particularly on teachers, wonder what sites might be sued for having ‘face’ in it? Would have been better to spend that money on something worthwhile.

Regardless of money involved, trademarking ‘book’ should never be one of them and frankly, in my opinion may have been illegal. If it is too common, it should not be used. I am still a bit iffy on the whole trademark issues and wonder – do all countries have a similar process of trademark?

Who dictates what can be trademarked and how it should be enforced – or does a company just report that they think someone is purposely trying to make money off of them.

I looked into Wikipedia to just get a brief overview of what trademark really is.

Short definition-wise, Wikipedia states:

A trademark or trade mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

According to what I read at Wikipedia, there are policies in place that if a company wrongfully accuses another or even threatens another company over trademark issues. Hopefully something can be resolved. In this situation, Facebook needs to just grow up and let it go. If there are 500 million teachers out there, then that is when it might be a problem.

What do you think about this? Do you think Facebook is in the right or just wasting money and time?

I was reading How To Breaks 100K Alexa Rank? on Another Blogger and found these to be a good start for people wanting to get their site rolling on Alexa.

I am going to reveal how you can have an Alexa rank better than 100,000. However, before I go into it, you do not always have to sign up for Alexa. It is nice to do and you can share a nice brag badge. I signed up, but my site was listed long before I even signed up. I do though recommend just in case so you can make sure your site ‘s information is accurate.

Now that I have said that, here is how you can build your site’s rank.

1. Update frequently. I try to update once a day, sometimes even twice a day. Other days I may skip every so often.
2. Return comments. CommentLuv is a great plugin to install and give you an idea through comments what your visitors are talking about. You never know when you might blog and give them credit for prompting you to continue the conversation on your own site.
3. Encourage readers to subscribe to your newsletters and RSS feed.
4. Promote your site on social networks and social bookmark sites.
5. Make sure you strategically put the important parts of your site that you want people to view in a manner that catches their eye. It does not matter if it is half way down your page when scrolling… if it looks interesting, people will at least click.
6. Focus on developing parts of your site that Alexa says people are searching for by keyword.
7. Write great content! No one is interested in the same exact thing that maybe a couple hundred sites have said. Think outside the box and write a new angle that will deliver unique, interesting, and valuable information.

While you may think this is really easy, it is not. It does take work. While there are other ways people monitor their traffic and site’s progress, Alexa is indeed a great tool – and it is free too!

In the end, the point is to bring attention to your site, particularly what you want them to see first.

While there are plenty of normal tips for budding website owners to read about, there are still a lot of mistakes happening. Putting a website together is a learning experience that requires careful attention. There are people who will just slap anything up for a quick buck, but in the end, it bites them in the ass.

Here are some tips to avoid when creating a website for the first time:

Your Brand

Do not put any old name and logo together. Be creative, but remember this is something you are putting together that may become something people will remember you by. Even if you do not know what you want right away, at least use something simple and tasteful. You can later change your brand as your business grows.

Your Design

Avoid choosing the easiest route for your site’s design. Even if it is free or really cheap… it might not work for you later on when you are needing to make changes and… 1, you are not able to make those changes, or 2, you do not want to spend money to pay someone to make those changes. Find something you can use, but will aesthetically pleasing for your brand.

Do not design with one browser in mind. Even if you might prefer one browser versus another, your visitors may be using something else. Be accessible.

Do not clutter up your site. While you do not want things looking like they are floating miles apart, you definitely do not want to blast people with content so smashed together that it is hard to discern where one thing ends and another begins.

Avoid using a font that is either too tiny to read or a font that is hard to read because of its design. A lot of 12 pixels tall will suffice for normal reading. Anything smaller may have vision impaired visitors squinting or giving up on your site.

Your Content

Do not write like you are trying to write for a newspaper. It is silly and may not even encourage people to leave feedback.

Do not forget to have some type of contact form. Leaving your email address is risky. A nice and secure contact form is great to bring in potential leads.

If you are selling a product, keep the copy clear and concise – avoid unnecessary words. People want to get to the point quickly. If you cannot convince people in less than 500 words to buy your product, you need to tweak your pitch.

These are just a few tips.

What tips do you recommend people to avoid if they are putting together a website for the first time?

LinkedIn is a great tool in itself that has become a way for professionals to connect. You can use it to reel in traffic.

In a way, LinkedIn has become a social network for mature users, rather than convoluted with game apps and other things like Facebook and MySpace. By the way, I do love Facebook, but sometimes there are things I really did not want to see and remind me of my old MySpace days.

You do not have to be “friends” to connect. Some people take the word “friend” to heart. LinkedIn is where you can try to establish any type of connection… though I am sure for a lot of you, a professional connection is ideal.

Here are just a few methods I use in bringing traffic to any of my websites from LinkedIn:

1. Install the WordPress applications for LinkedIn on my profile. When people visit, they will see what you write about. If you are someone who blogs about your career field, this could be an added bonus especially when finding a job.
2. Join groups and participate. There are a load of people who are looking to connect with other professionals in their niche. With the hundreds of groups available, you cannot go wrong.
3. Share your articles on your LinkedIn social stream. You can connect your LinkedIn account to other social networks or manually enter your update.
4. Submit your articles to group news. This is a nice addition, especially if the group has a lot of members. It might be a bit tedious, but you could bring in traffic and even feedback that you would not have found anywhere else… and you know what… it would be with people who are actually interested in what you have to say.

If you used LinkedIn, what other methods do you use to promote your site in order to bring in traffic?

During my studies, it was clear that companies that basically took over a whole market of products were considered a monopoly. In the United States, it has been a law against companies becoming monopolies since the early 1900s.

However, does that also include companies that conduct business online, and more so… how far can the old Sherman Anti-Trust Act extend?

Yahoo!, Google, and now Facebook are all big kahunas in acquiring smaller internet companies.

Yahoo! has been known to acquire companies and eventually burn them to the ground – like GeoCities. Google just likes to buy and play their name in front of the product, like Google Feedburner. Facebook… well… they just like to buy and shut out competition. Facebook bought FriendFeed and recently it acquired NextStop. Facebook is looking to have its own version of FourSquare.

Sorry, but even though I am not as active on FourSquare… why in the heck would I use Facebook to check in anywhere considering they do not have the best privacy for users?

Facebook is the #2 site online in Alexa and and is one of the most powerful tools for social media marketing. However… are all these acquisitions profitable ventures for Facebook? Or will they crash and burn like some of the programs both Yahoo! and Google have let die in the past 15 years?

What do you think?

There are so many ways you can monitor your site. Google Analytics, Quantcast, Woopra, and much more. But with all these bars, graphs, and numbers – what do they mean? This article will discuss how you can analyze your site stats.

The Terms
Visits – This is pretty much self-explanatory.

Average Time on Site – This is how long your visitors stay on your site. You want them to stay on your site as long as possible. This means you have to provide interesting, relatable, and valuable content.

Bounce Rate -Google explains bounce rate as:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert.

Conversion Rate – This is the percentage of how many people you have gotten to do something other than just visit and leave your main page. It might be an e-commerce shop, a script, an e-book, or something. This is something that attracts people to the nifty parts of your site that you wanted people to see.

How To Make These Work For You
Applying these tools usually takes inserting a snippet of code somewhere in your theme. The site will track and you can go in daily or weekly to see your site’s progress.

In order to see progress, you have to create content that will attract readers – no matter what niche you might be in. And yes, even if you just have a journal site to document your family life, as long as you are striving to reach a certain audience, you too also have to watch your stats.

Focus on what people are looking for on your site, what pages they are visiting, where they entered from, where they left your site from, and even what time they are visiting. You can blog anytime you want, but if your regular visitors come around a certain time, aim to publish before they might come by.

You might have to venture into search engine optimization and make sure your articles are effectively being seen. So, if your keywords are not what they should be… you might want to go back and check things out.

If you have a site that has several major products (whether it be a free product or one for purchase), you can focus on each. When you do, check your stats to see what methods are successful and what are not. If people are visiting the page, but nothing is happening, you might want to check out the content on the page and see why it is not bringing the results you want.

A few outside related resources in Web Analytics that you might like to read when you are done here:
Web Analytics 101 -Learn Which Data You Should Be Using
Annotations of Google Analytics..How To Successfully Track What’s Working

What other suggestions do you have for anyone looking to make the most of their site stats? Any questions?

MailChimp is the only e-mail marketing service I have used. Not only is the design user friendly, but so are the features.

Site Design
The tabs and set-up make navigating very user-friendly. Generally speaking, you can get to a feature in two clicks or less.

List Management
Their service is free for e-mail lists of 500 addresses or less. To add names to your list, you just need a first name, last name, and e-mail address. Also, managing lists is pretty simple. You can have one huge list and segment the list to ensure that only certain information goes to individuals who requested it.

Creating Campaigns
Creating and managing campaigns is a breeze. MailChimp walks you through the entire five-step process. They offer several template options to choose from depending on your message. After selecting the form, you can customize it with one of their designs or upload your own. They even offer a photo-editing program to help with design. If at anytime you have to stop while creating your campaign, just save your work and pick up where you left off at a later time.

Text, Photos and Videos
Text, photos and videos can be used to share your message. Generally speaking, the use of text is pretty straightforward. However, it was a little challenging to change some of the headers from subtitle to default text. I had to do a little finagling, but once it was done, it was fairly easy. Also, if you’re used to right clicking to get your menu, this option is not available. Instead you have to use keyboard shortcuts or the menu bar. The cool thing about MailChimp is they do show you the appropriate keyboard controls for the actions, but it’s still a little annoying for
right-clickers.

Adding and resizing photos is very easy. Videos, on the other hand, require extra work. Videos cannot be inserted directly into your message. You first have to upload it to YouTube. Then, you add the video link to the message. If you want your audience to know the topic of your message, you have to insert a photo and then follow the above steps.

On a more positive note: MailChimp is working on improving this feature. At least that’s what the MailChimp blog said the last time I read it.

Social Share
MailChimp offers you the option to share the title of your campaign and a link to the message on Facebook, Twitter and a couple other social networking sites after the message is forwarded to your e-mail list. This feature would probably be more effective if a brief description of the message was included.

Reports
The reports on MailChimp are very comprehensive. The number of times the message was opened; who opened it; how many times it was opened; and the time of day it was opened are just a few of the details that can be obtained. Reports can be downloaded.

Autoresponder
I have never used the auto responder feature, so I cannot speak on that.

Tutorials & Instruction
The best features on MailChimp which actually made me select them as my e-mail marketing provider are their webinars and video tutorials. They hold regular webinars for new and current users to ask questions to make their experience more effective and efficient. Video tutorials are short videos available at almost any stage of your campaign creation for instruction. They even offer tips on how to grow your list.

Lastly, their blog and knowledge base is available 24/7 with answers to questions and new developments as they occur. I love their availability of information to make using their program easy to use.

MailChimp’s design, ease of use, and information overload makes them my preferred e-mail marketing provider. The little monkey is kind of cool, too.

Have you used MailChimp for your newsletters? What have you thought of it?

(If you use another email marketing service, please feel free to drop an email through the contact form if you are interested in guest blogging your experience with it.)

Some would argue that it is not worth it and is only a system to track traffic. In fact a lot of the traffic they track usually depends on whether or not your visitor installed the Alexa tool bar. So how does Alexa put together a number for each site?

According to Alexa’s FAQ How are Alexa’s traffic rankings determined?, traffic rank is determined by the number of uses of their toolbar. The uses are divvied between page views and reach. Even if you visit a site multiple times, your visit is only counted once. Again, this is solely based on Alexa users.

So what could this mean for some people who want to improve it?

This means that you should probably encourage your visitors to download the Alexa toolbar. For those who have websites already, it might be a good thing as there are plugins for Firefox that you can install and monitor your Alexa rank without even directly visiting the site.

Does Alexa Rank Really Matter?

Yes, it does. A lot of ad systems and advertisers look at these ranks to figure out how successful a site is and gauge how many people they could possibly attract through purchasing advertising. Others think of it as a site goal to make a certain number. That is fine too.

People need these type of systems to find some sort of progress. Please do remember that it does take some work to achieve these types of goals. Some webmasters will succeed faster than others due to their website’s topics and their influence within social networks as well as other online communities.

Dan Keller writes in his article How to Improve your Alexa Ranking. You might want to hop on over there and read his post. I do want to note that even though he mentions webmaster, you can pretty much exchange it with your target audience and you will do fine.

Do you know your Alexa rank? Have you already downloaded the Alexa Toolbar? Should website owners pay attention to their rank at Alexa?