Update your JTF feed and get some goodies

If you're receiving this post, then you haven't updated your feed subscription to the new Just the FAQs blog and you may be missing new posts. We're running a great podcast series on blogging with marketing guru Dana Lynn Smith right now. It includes special links to a jam-packed Resource page full of free goodies, so get your subscription updated now.

You can get each blog post delivered directly to you the moment it becomes available through the RSS feed. Updating your free subscription is as easy as clicking the new link.

Visit the blog now at www.JustTheFAQs.net/blog and look in the sidebar to fill in your email address or click the link to have the posts delivered in a reader.

Get Your Free Gift Tutorial

Are you missing your free gift from Just the FAQS? You are if you haven't updated your RSS feed subscription to the new JTF blog yet.

Go there now and get your free gift. It's a great tutorial to get more followers on your site.

The Blog is Moving

I'm delighted to announce that the JTF blog is moving to a WordPress blog format that has been integrated with the main site.

You'll want to update your RSS feed settings for the new blog. No new posts will be placed on this Blogger site for JTF.

To update your feed subscription, you can simply visit the new blog at www.JustTheFAQs.net/blog and click the subscription links. Or, you can manually update your feed settings to
http://feeds.feedburner.com/justthefaqs/KMVg

The entire Just the FAQs site has been updated as well and includes the two new sets of WordPress books along with new "peek inside" features that show you more content of the all the books. You'll also find new articles to download for free with lots of great tips and tricks.

Thanks for being a loyal JTF blog subscribers. I'm sure you'll enjoy the new site. Tips are being posted daily!

Talking Fiction with Carolyn Howard-Johnson

On the Air - Just the FAQs Podcast - featuring a variety of guests working in the business of writing

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is an amazing woman. I could sit at her feet all day and listen to her talk about books, marketing, and her life. She's been there and done that and has the books and awards to show for it.

I'm delighted to present another wonderful two-part interview with Carolyn. This time she discusses writing fiction with insights into her own writing process. Carolyn candidly shares how she based her novel, This is the Place, and her collection of short stories, Harkening, on her own life experience.

In the second part of the interview we discuss more ways to market a fiction book including the role of online marketing as well as the emergence of e-books, virtual tours, and how giving "freebies" create buzz. We also chat more about poetry and unique and fun ways Carolyn has marketed her own writings.

Join us for this fun, insightful, and engaging chat on Just the FAQs Podcast.

New WordPress Series Now Available

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the new WordPress series of e-books from Just the FAQs. The first set of three e-books details everything you need to know about creating, optimizing, and running a site on WordPress.com.

The 90 page Reference Manual covers every aspect of WordPress with screenshots and detailed descriptions of each element and link available.

The 30 page RSS Feeds book guides you step-by-step through setting up, fully customizing, and optimizing the feeds supplied on some WordPress.com templates or setting up feeds with FeedBurner and installing them on your site.

The 14 page Quick Start Guide takes you through the essential steps of customizing the look of your new WordPress site, making your first post and creating more pages on your site.

The books are available individually or as a full set with special savings.

Another full set of books on WordPress.org sites is already in the works and will be available later this fall.

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified when new books and updates become available.

Dana Lynn Smith on Just the FAQs Podcast

On the Air - Just the FAQs Podcast - featuring a variety of guests working in the business of writing
Dana Lynn Smith is a book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer series. She has a degree in marketing and 15 years of publishing experience.

Dana joins us again to talk about why Twitter and Facebook are such valuable promotional tools for authors and how to really take advantage of these powerful networking tools. If you’ve ever wondered what the heck you should be tweeting about or whether you should be promoting through a Facebook profile, page, or group, you’ll find the answers here.

The show airs September 17th. Visit Just the FAQs Podcast page for more details and links to Dana's new books.

Hear the Podcast on iTunes

On the Air - Just the FAQs Podcast - featuring a variety of guests working in the business of writing
Just the FAQs Podcast shows are now available on iTunes where you can download them for free. You can find them in the Podcast section under Literature, or simply search Just the FAQs.

You can also subscribe directly to the podcast RSS feed to receive instant notification of when a new podcast becomes available for download. Click the link below to sign up.

Subscribe to the Podcast feed

New shows are being lined up for September. Be sure to visit the JTF Podcast page often to see who's lined up and hear some great archived shows.

Upcoming Interview on Just the FAQs Podcast

On the Air - Just the FAQs Podcast - featuring a variety of guests working in the business of writing
I am so impressed with what one talented and passionate person can do to make a real difference in the world through writing, and you will be too when you hear this podcast with Dallas Woodburn and the path she has been on since fifth grade. She also shares tips and insights on connecting with young readers, connecting with the joy of the process of writing, self-publishing, and promoting through speaking engagements.

We'll be recording the interview on Monday and the show will air on Thursday, August 27th.

Visit Just the FAQs Podcast page for more info on Dallas and check out the archived podcasts while you're there, including the special two-part interview with Carolyn Howard-Johnson.

New WordPress books on the Way

The drafts for a new set of WordPress books is finished and on their way to the illustrator. The new series is a three book set on WordPress.com including:

• Quick Start Guide - taking you step-by-step from setting up your site to making your first post
• Reference Manual - nearly 90 pages detailing every aspect of WordPress.com plus tutorials
• RSS Feeds for WordPress.com - including step-by-step guidance for using the built-in feeds from WordPress or installing feeds with FeedBurner for better tracking.

The series is scheduled to release in September. A WordPress.org series will soon follow.

Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to be immediately notified when the books become available.

Just the FAQs Class Winners

The virtual blog tour for Just the FAQs wrapped up this week. I’d like to extend a warm thank you to each host for helping create such a wonderful tour. The drawing for the two free classes was held. Winners are Deb and Barbara. After the class we’ll be showing off their blogs.

Just the FAQs classes will be offered monthly with the next class starting on August 14th, 2009. Class size is limited, so be sure to register early. Visit Just the FAQs Classes for details on all the books and bonuses you’ll receive.

You can also subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed via email or in a reader to ensure you get the latest announcements and news from Just the FAQs.

Marketing Tips for Authors

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour

Becoming a successful author these days requires an online marketing campaign. That means becoming familiar with Web 2.0 including websites, blogs, RSS feeds, and social networking. But, many authors are not comfortable with the technical aspects of developing an online presence. Read my guest post today on Marketing Tips for Authors and discover what you need to know to become a successful author.

Getting Traffic to Your Site - Interview on Websites on A Book Inside

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour

Join me today for a great interview on A Book Inside with host Carol Denbow. We discuss different sites that are good for authors and how to get more traffic.

Protecting Your Site Copyright and Domain

The two most important things you can do as a site owner are to ensure that you own your site's copyright and domain name. As a matter of convenience, many site designers offer to set up your hosting and domain for you. However, in doing so, they also list themselves as the owners of both. If the design firm goes belly up, or if you want to switch designers, you may loose the right to use any part of your site or, more importantly, loose the right to use the domain name you've built your business brand on.

Find out how to protect yourself and ensure that you own your site and domain name. Read Protecting Your Site Copyright and Domain on Just the FAQs Resources.

Interview and Review from Author Joyce Arnold

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour

Join me on Books and Authors with host Joyce Arnold for a wonderful review and interview of Just the FAQs books and classes.

Interview on The Writer Today

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour
Join me for an informative interview on The Writer Today where we chat about a day in the life of a writer, the idea behind JTF books, and what inspires and motivates me.

Protecting Your Email from Spam

Bloggers and website owners use many different tricks to curtail having their contact information harvested by spam bots while still making it easily available to humans. Spam bots are a spin-off of the same sort of automated programs used by search engines, which are called spiders because they crawl the Web gathering information about site pages. The spiders collect data primarily from meta tags in the page’s code. These include the description and keywords meta tags. Spam bots, on the other hand, look through the page’s code in search of terms like “mailto” or the “@” symbol. These are dead giveaways that an email address is contained in that part of the code.

Find out how you can foil the spam bots from getting your email address. Read the full article Protecting Your Email from Spam on the Resources page.

Video Marketing Made Easy

Video marketing is one of the hottest emerging trends and is quickly replacing text-only article marketing as a way to drive traffic to your site.

You say you don't have the money for a slick, high-budget production? No problem. Folk-style video has become so common that even the most reasonable efforts to make it a quality production will stand out. And, there's another perk to making your own videos. They will have a genuineness and sincerity factor that high-budget productions can't match.

If you’re a little intimidated by the learning curve and expense of equipment you’ll need to produce a video, don’t be. The best way to get started with video marketing is to make a movie trailer for your product from still shots. The software to do this is free and may already reside on your computer.

Visit Just the FAQs Resources page to read the full article on Getting Started with Video Marketing to see how easy it is. The article contains several links to help you find the right tools to get you started today.

Interview with The Creative Penn

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour
Join me today on the next stop of Just the FAQs Virtual Tour with an interview on The Creative Penn. RSS feeds will be explained and we discuss why sometimes it's a good idea to have both a blog and separate website.

How Hot is the Online Video Market?

According to a recent article in Scientific American, "video files will be part of 90 percent of all consumer Internet traffic (that generated by households, universities, and Internet cafés) in 2013." This statement is part of a report issued by Cisco, which is the leading supplier of networking equipment and network management for the Internet.

Cisco issued that report just one day after Apple announced that their next iPhone will be able to not only record video clips, but will also be able to edit and send them via email or upload them to YouTube using voice commands.

What this means is that it will no longer be enough to provide great text content for online marketing. As a promoter, you'll have to make it visually entertaining as well. Fortunately there are a lot of free or inexpensive applications available that you can use to make your own videos. In fact, if you're on a PC, Windows Media is already available to you. There are even more programs available for MAC users.

You say you don't have the money for a slick, high-budget production? No problem. Folk-style video is so common that even the most reasonable efforts to make it a quality production will stand out. And, there's another perk to making your own videos. They will have a genuineness and sincerity factor that high-budget productions can't match.

Do you already make your own videos? Share your set up and tips by leaving a comment.

Interview on Walking on Water

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour
Children's author Katie Hines interviews me on her blog, Walking on Water. On Friday's, Katie also posts a seven-part exclusive series from Just the FAQs on writing and marketing an e-book.

Learning the Online Marketing Lingo

If you are new to online marketing, you may be confused about all the industry-specific language that's used like Web 2.0, RSS feeds, or widgets. Or, perhaps you know what a blog is, but don't know it fits with all of the other marketing tools.

A new article explaining Online Marketing Lingo is posted on the Just the FAQs Resources page and can help you make sense of it all in language that you can easily understand.

If you have questions about other geek-speak or tech-terms that you don't understand, post a comment here and I'll be happy to answer it for you.

Interview with the Book Marketing Maven today

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour

Why are blogs with RSS feeds so important? Find out when author and marketing coach Dana Lynn Smith interviews me today on Book Marketing Maven

On the Air with Dresser After Dark

On the Air - Just the FAQs guests on Dresser After Dark

Every Wednesday, I’ll be a guest on the nationally syndicated radio show Dresser After Dark, hosted by Michael Ray Dresser. The show features authors and experts from all over the country who offer solutions to the listening audience on all types of lifestyle matters as well as business and financial areas of interest. Michael Ray is a thought provoking radio talk show host who is well known for getting to the heart of the issue at hand.

Here’s the lineup of topics for July.

July 8 – Online Marketing Lingo
Does the geek-speak of online marketing confuse you? You’re not alone. Join us to learn the lingo.

July 15 – How Hot is the Online Video Market?
If you don’t have a video online, you’re missing out on one of the hottest marketing trends. Find out what you need to know to get started.

July 22 – Protecting Email from spam
Can you display your email address on your blog and still protect it from spam? Yes, you can. Find out how.

July 29 – Protecting your site copyright and domain name
What all site owners should know to protect themselves from a very expensive pitfall.

Principled Profit Interviews Just the FAQs

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour
Just the FAQs virtual tour continues today with an interview by Shel Horowitz on his Principled Profit site. Stop by and see how you can make the most of your online presence and what trends are hot.

The JTF Virtual Tour Kicks Off with Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Just the FAQs Virtual Blog Tour
The first stop on Just the FAQs blog tour is a visit on Carolyn Howard-Johnson's blog, Sharing with Writers and Authors. Be sure to leave a comment for your chance to win one of two free classes given away during the tour.

What Share-Type are You?

After participating in several social networks for a year, I’ve noticed that folks usually latch on to a trend in the way they post and the type of information that they share.

The first Web log began as a personal diary posted for public view. Media coverage spread like wildfire about someone making their daily activities, musings, and intimate thoughts available for anyone with an Internet connection to see. What soon became really shocking about the story was not that someone would place their diary in public view but that so many others would want to read it and were inspired to follow suit. Soon afterward, the cold terminology “Web log” gave way to the more endearing term “blog.”

As the number of blogs increased, new tools were developed to help folks keep up with posts on the blogs they regularly followed. One such tool is RSS feeds, which makes blog posts available for syndication and lets viewers create a virtual newspaper of sorts in a reader where they can peruse posts from all of their favorite blogs in one place.

But, having the time to read all those lengthy posts became a problem, hence the birth of micro-blogging on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, both of which constrain how many characters can be used for any single post.

There is a huge cultural difference emerging in what’s posted on a traditional blog and the type of information that appears on micro-blogs. Web log diaries were originally a form of journaling and the information was created with reflection on the day after the events were over. That has evolved into sharing whole ideas with others of like-mind or making announcements of news that the readers of that blog will find interesting. Micro-blog posts are more in-the-moment and only snippets of ideas or news can be shared. Because apps are available that allow folks to post from their mobile device, they often include pictures taken on that device too, providing a video diary of their activities.

What does all of this mean? Are we trading the sit-down dinner of a traditional blog for the fast food snippets of micro-blogs? Are we becoming addicted to sharing the mundane occurrences of our lives with the world? Or, do we now have a tool to respond as a global community to current events or initiate change? Most folks who use micro-blogs regularly are finding it to be a great way to stay connected with friends, family, and like-minded folks, especially if they are across the country or the globe. It is replacing phone calls, emails, and in-person visits. With so many posts, are we contributing to someone’s day or just making noise about what seems important to us at the moment?

Folks do tend to post information on these sites in a certain ritualistic manner. Following are a few of the share-types I’ve noticed. What type are you?

Here Now – shares the mundane, usually with pictures, of daily events.
Dear Diary – shares thoughts on events of the day.
Hey Lookie – promotes their latest offering.
Daily Quote – offers inspirational or thought provoking messages.
Dialoguer – posts conversation starters, usually in question form.
Grand Idea – posts a big idea one snippet at a time.
Linker – shares links to info they find helpful or interesting.
Muse – shares thoughts in beautiful prose style.
News Hound – posts breaking news on a variety of topics.

This is only a sampling of share-styles. You’re welcome to add to the list and post your comments.

Addendum to original post: Favorite comment from Eleanor Roosevelt said "Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people."

Giveaways During Virtual Tour in July

Just the FAQs will be on virual tour during the entire month of July. Two free classes on blogs with RSS feeds will be given away to folks who post comments on the host sites. Multiple interviews and reviews are already scheduled along with a few guest posts. Information about the tour, including dates and host links, can be found here.

In anticipation of the tour, new articles are being posted to the Resources page, where you'll also find free downloads and helpful books as well as services from trusted providers.

Just the FAQs Podcast with Author Michael Turner

On the Air - Just the FAQs Podcast - featuring a variety of guests working in the business of writing
Author Michael Turner has been the organizer for the Nashville Writers Meetup group since 2003, which has grown from three members to over six hundred. He also heads up the Nashville Podcasting Meetup group. Micheal’s book, The S.E.C.R.E.T. Method to Winning the Scholarship Game: 51 Secrets for Financing Your College Education at Little or No Cost will soon be released as an e-book.

We'll be discussing the benefits of networking face-to-face with other writers. Discover how meeting with other writers on a regular basis can help you develop relationships that will hone your craft and provide tips and tricks of the trade.

Visit Just the FAQs Podcast for more information.

New Blog and RSS Feed Classes from Just the FAQs

Just the FAQs announces new classes beginning in July with step-by-step tutorials and teleclasses to guide you through the process of of creating, customizing, optimizing, and using a blog on Blogger with RSS feeds from FeedBurner.

In just one week, you'll be blogging with confidence and making your posts available for syndication. All classes come with a set of Just the FAQs e-books, plus special bonuses. And, the classes cover advanced tips and tricks not covered in the books.

The classes are great for folks just starting out as well as folks who have been blogging for a while and want to jazz up their blog and get it fully optimized.

Owners of static Web sites can benefit from these classes too. There’s no need to completely redesign your site. Your blog posts can easily be auto-fed directly into your current site.

Two free classes will be given away to folks who leave comments during the upcoming virtual blog tour in July. Subscribe to the RSS feed for details as they are announced.

Visit Just the FAQs Classes for more information on the classes and see how easy it is to get online the right way, the first time.