Whether you work for yourself or someone else, it’s important to establish and maintain both a strong personal and professional online presence. Given the uncertain economic times, you should be actively engaged in how you present yourself to the world (wide web). When prospective employers or clients Google your name, what do they find? If it’s nothing or next to nothing, then you have a great opportunity. If there’s a lot of junk, then you also have an opportunity to turn that around to your advantage! Either way, you have some work to do. Get out the calendar and resolve to tackle one of these items every couple weeks as you polish your image.

1. Register Your Own Domain Name

When branding yourself on the web, there’s no better place to start than registering your own domain name. If your name is somewhat unique, chances are it’s available. If you have a more common name, then try lots of variations. For example, johnasmith.com is taken, but john-a-smith.com is available. If it weren’t, you could try more combinations or see if any of your top choices are open as a .net, .info, or .tv address.

Use a domain registrar like GoDaddy to find out what’s available. When you’ve made your selection, buy it for several years at a minimum. Search engines will sometimes take the registration period into account in factoring how valid an address is.

2. Start a Blog

If you don’t already have a personal website, using a blogging platform is a quick, inexpensive and flexible way to make one. You could opt not to take advantage of the actual blogging features of a blog, but that would defeat the purpose. If you can commit to posting interesting and intelligent observations or articles on a regular basis (ideally at least one of week), then a blog will go a long way toward helping you establish a “voice” on the web.

I recommend using WordPress. Read previous articles about setting up and using WordPress.

I also highly recommend using Feedburner once your URL and blog are ready and working. It will help you maximize your RSS feed, which is essential for getting well indexed by search engines and blogging directories like Technorati.

If you’re a business owner, instead of (or in addition to) a personal blog, you might also consider a professional blog for your company. I’ve heard some businesses argue, “Customers in my industry don’t find [our type of business] online (or on blogs).” To which I say, are you nuts? If that were actually the case for any given industry, it would make an even more compelling case for using blogging and other online resources to your advantage. The fact is, many companies in “boring” B2B and B2C niches have realized how effective blogs are at establishing thought leadership and credibility. A favorite example of mine recently is a commercial and residential fencing company in Raleigh, NC, that installs fencing. The are effectively using a blog to spotlight jobs, discuss challenges and educate consumers on things like how to get permits. The strategy is a good one, especially since it lands their blog on page one of Google’s natural results for raleigh fencing.

3. Hire a Professional Photographer

You know a picture is worth a thousands words. So why settle for using your own cheap, red-eye riddled, poorly lit and badly composed photos on your website and other places on the web? Pay money and sit down for a professional photo shoot, with someone who can make you look like a million bucks. Be sure to get the rights to use your photos anywhere, and obtain digital files.

4. Write a Professional Bio

Spend time sprucing up your biography. If words don’t come naturally, sit down with a friend and a tape recorder and talk about the things that make you unique. Or hire a copywriter to craft the story for you.

When you have it ready, paste it (along with one of your sharp new photos) to sites like VisualCV and LinkedIn.

5. Improve your LinkedIn Profile

Speaking of LinkedIn (you are on LinkedIn, right?), now’s the time to fully complete your profile. Replace your photo. Flesh out every job description you have. Connect with former co-workers and clients. Search for and join groups related to your professional interests. Seek references from former co-workers, clients, teachers and friends. Better yet, write references for others first; they will likely return the favor. Use LinkedIn Answers to search for topics you’re well versed in, and post well-written responses.

6. Launch (Or Clean Up) Your Facebook Page

It’s not just for the college kids anymore. This was the year Facebook really took off, hitting 100 million users in August 2008. So if you’ve been sitting on the fence (my apologies to the above-mentioned Raleigh company), get on it!

If you’re starting with a blank slate, treat it with respect and build your profile carefully using your professional quality photos and bio. Listen and learn before you start posting a whole lot of nothing. Remember this crucial point: anything you post there can help you or hurt you. Several public school teachers in my hometown of Charlotte were fired or reprimanded this year for inappropriate posts on Facebook. Take this and other social networking channels very seriously, unless you don’t care about the possible consequences.

If you’re already on Facebook and have embarrassing information, get rid of it. Lose any bad language, drunken or half-naked photos, rambling diatribes and anything else that paints you in a negative light. The same goes for information on any other social networks you actively use, like MySpace or Bebo.

7. Learn and Apply Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization

A common misperception is that search engine optimization, or SEO, is out of the realm of non-techical mortals. Actually, some essential best practices can be learned fast, and are surprisingly easy to implement.

One of the best books I read this year was Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online(Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss). Among the many tips in the book are specific ways to find out what’s being “said” about you in search queries, and more importantly how to use SEO techniques to make positive changes in how you rank.

If you’re in the Charlotte area, my friend and SEO specialist Corey Creed of Hippo Internet Marketing teaches outstanding classes on SEO as well as pay-per-click advertising (which you can use to more quickly direct links to your personal or professional sites). Another excellence learning resource (courtesy of Corey) is Michael Campbell’s Internet Marketing Secrets. Michael’s free podcast interviews of SEO experts are packed with useful tips. Yet another fantastic resource is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

8. Twitter Your Way To The Top

Twitter is service that took off like wildfire this year. Millions of people are now sending short text messages or “tweets” of 140 characters or less. More importantly, they are using Twitter to learn about news and trends instantaneously (often before mainstream media reports on it, like during the Mumbai tragedy), get fast customer support, seek advice and connect in unprecedented ways with others.

For many (myself included), Twitter is initially puzzling and frustrating. A common question early on is, What’s the point? However, if you stick with it, Twitter can lead to amazing things like meeting fascinating people where you live or who work in your industry, creating lightning fast business contacts and uncovering resources you never knew existed.

I suggest following power Twitter users (some of my favorites are Chris Brogan, Wayne Sutton and Lisa Hoffmann) to learn the secrets of this powerful tool. Hint: it’s about giving information freely and acknowledging others, before tooting your own horn.

There are now dozens of third-party sites that tap the power of Twitter for various purposes. Use sites like Twitter Search and TweetBeep to look for keywords important to you, Twubble to find people to “follow,” and Monitter or TweetGrid to watch “real time conversations” happening on Twitter. Get hip to the strange Twitter lingo and keep exploring!

9. Hire A Professional Image Consultant

Chances are the image you think you’re portraying is not what is coming across to others. Are you unknowingly hurting your chances in business and personal settings due to deficiencies in your visual appearance, your verbal or nonverbal communications? Believe it or not, these shortcomings also manifest themselves online, through poor language skills and other ways.

It might be time to engage with a professional image consultant. He or she is trained to help you present yourself to your best advantage and to express your highest potential. An image consultant can teach you how to polish your professional image in three areas:

• Your physical appearance
• Your behavior
• Your communication skills

To learn more about the benefits of working with an image consultant and to locate one near you, visit the Association of Image Consultants International.

10. Get A Real Life

Face(book) it, you can—and should—focus just so much of your attention on your online profile and your virtual life. You also need to make a concerted effort to unplug and engage with living, breathing people in the Real World 1.0. Your virtual life should compliment your physical one, not the other way around.

If you’re starting or already have your own business, join your local chamber of commerce or an association specific to your industry. Can’t find a chapter in your area? Then start one! Or use Meetup.com to invite small groups of like-minded people to informal gatherings. Even on Twitter, lots of users are fond of starting nearly spontaneous “Tweetups,” where people get together for events. Another emerging concept, especially in larger cities, is the concept of casual co-working, or more affectionately known as Jelly. There are lots of opportunities to mingle with and develop great relationships with others, especially if you work alone.

Do you have other ideas to improve your personal and professional brand, both on and off the web? Leave your comments below. Happy branding!

Photo credit: Cogdogblog

In this multi-part series, I’m going to cover various applications that I’ve personally used and can recommend to anyone starting a web-based business.

For those of you just reading for this site for the first time, take note that Web Business Freedom has been online since early September 2008. So it’s a mere babe in the woods compared to many sites. And right now, the site is primarily a blog used to share information as I establish an online presence and credibility (both for you, kind reader, as well as the soul-less bots from Google and other machines that creep and crawl through the site regularly, finding nothing of substance in a rambling sentence like this).

The point is, I’m not using any software for e-commerce or other really advanced activities (yet). Nevertheless, I’m using some smart stuff behind the scenes. Here is the first round of my must-have apps:

WordPress

I’m already written extensively about how to set up a website using WordPress. WordPress is the bedrock software for this site and hundreds of thousands of other web startups. It is open source goodness at its best, and it only going to get better with their next big release (coming soon!).

Read the previous posts (Part 1 and Part 2) to decide which version of WordPress is right for you, WordPress.com or WordPress.org.

Google Apps

Cost: $50 per user account per year

Most people obviously know Google as the Big Kahuna of search, as well as a bunch of other amazing free software. But did you know you can get your own customized company email address, calendar and more from Google?

With Google Apps, you will gain enterprise-level functionality for your domain right off the bat, for free (ad-supported) or for the extremely affordable price of $50 per user account per year. See the comparison between the free and paid Google Apps versions.

At first glance, this might look like a trivial suite of services. But consider the combined power of the applications Google offers. It’s a tremendous value for startups, not to mention that all the information is readily available wherever you can get on the Internet.

The setup is a fairly simple process. After registering the Web Business Freedom URL (see previous article on registering a domain name, I headed over to Google Apps and signed up for the Premium Edition. It includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee for my Gmail account, 25 GB of email storage, a variety of integration APIs (which I haven’t used), and telephone support for critical issues (also haven’t used this, as the service has worked as advertised).

If you have a domain already, you’re a step ahead; if not, Google can help register one for you, although I can’t vouch for how this works.

Once the plumbing is in place, you get your own company start page on Google, where you (or others using your domain) can preview your calendar and emails. You can also customize the page with news, weather and other widgets. Personally, I don’t use this start page, opting to go straight into my Web Business Freedom Gmail account.

Your own branded Gmail alone is well worth the price of admission to Google Apps. It’s just like the incredible personal Gmail account you might already have, but with your email address at your domain name instead of @gmail.com. It comes with the plenty of storage, the ability to search all your emails instantaneously, and built-in instant messaging with your contacts.

Gmail also integrates with Google Calendar, which you can use to set up both personal and business calendars that you selectively share with co-workers, friends, vendors and others. Again, this is a “company” version of your calendar when you use Google Apps. I also consider Google Calendar an essential application to keep track of all your commitments and get things done. I even set up a separate “calendar” to log calls to make (with notes added for completed calls). That way, both appointments and calls are both accessible with Google Calendar.

Finally, you get Google Docs and Spreadsheets. You can use Docs and Spreadsheets much like an online version of Microsoft Office. Create or import documents, edit them in your browser and share with others to collaborate in real time.

Google Docs is a real boon to keeping lots of information online and being able to share and edit files with others. Along with mindmaps I use in Mindmeister, I spend a great deal of time keeping track of the business in Google Docs.

FreshBooks

Cost: $14 per month (that’s for the plan I’m using, aka “Shuttle Bus”)

Every real business has to keep tabs on where the money’s coming from, and where it’s going. At this early point in my new business life, I just wasn’t ready to commit the time to install and learn QuickBooks, which is certainly a great product for small businesses and widely used by CPAs, including mine. However, it’s pricey and frankly a little complicated in my opinion. (And the same issues apply to their web-based version, which I’ve heard is not as good as the desktop version.)

So instead of QuickBooks, I went with a more user-friendly solution, the web-based software FreshBooks. It allows me to quickly set up clients and jobs, enter time and bill clients by email. There are also more advanced options to take payments online.

I’ve found the site to be pretty easy to use (especially compared to my experience with Quickbooks in the past), with just a few quirky things. I especially like how easy it is to send professional looking invoices by email.

The main dilemma at this point is exporting the right information out of FreshBooks for my accountant (who will of course import it into QuickBooks!). There are ways to do it, but not quite as intuitive as I’d hoped they would be. Still, all in all, it’s a simple, easy and cost-effective solution.

Outright

Cost: Currently free (the site is in Beta), though they “do plan to charge for certain features in the future.”

I was also lucky to have found another solution for logging expenses, just prior to signing up for Freshbooks, called Outright (formerly called GoBootstrap). Not only is it free (for now), the even better news is that it integrates directly with Freshbooks. With Outright, you simply enter any expenses you incur and assign them to the appropriate IRS tax category. Outright does a great job of calculating your estimated quarterly tax payments. And since it now connects to Freshbooks, the calculation includes income along with the expenses.

That’s it for this first round of vital apps I use. Stay tuned for more in part two.

If you’d like to suggest any essential applications for web-based companies, feel free to leave a comment below.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flattop341

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

In the previous article about using WordPress, I mentioned some of top reasons to use it for your blog or small website.

One of my priorities when planning for Web Business Freedom was to establish a very professional look for the site. I am firm believer in the power of quality graphic design. Unfortunately on the web, design often takes a back seat to content. However, I think both design and content play a role in making a positive impression on your users.

Initially, I felt strongly about creating a custom, one-of-a-kind design for this website. So I asked a very talented designer I know to give me a quote. When it came back at more than $5,000, I decided to try to look for a cheaper option. Being in startup mode, every penny counts!

Fortunately, there are a lot of very good pre-defined WordPress layouts, otherwise known as themes. Once you have WordPress (the .org version) installed on your server, you’re free to use one of these themes.

Thousands of themes are free, and the only dilemma is spending the time searching for something to fit your needs. WordPress has its own free themes directory that allows you to search for many of these. Using a free theme is a good way to get started with WordPress. And you can always change your mind and choose another design.

If you’re hankering for something with more pizzazz than a standard free theme, but that’s less expensive than a custom design, you might try a premium theme. Typically, these will be very well designed WordPress layouts that also come with extra features built in, such as ready-to-use widgets that will enhance the functionality of your site.

I was fortunate to run across a relatively new site, WooThemes, that specializes in premium themes. One of them was very close to a rough sketch I had in mind for the Web Business Freedom site.

Like most premium theme sites, WooThemes provides detailed instructions on how to download and install their themes. After deciding on the theme I liked, I debated whether I wanted to do the installation myself. While not a novice with things like FTP and server settings, I was nevertheless a little intimidated. Essentially, I felt it would be a better use of my time if I could find someone to install the site for me, add my logo to it, tweak a few other settings, and make sure it was all working.

A friend suggested I contact one of the designers at WooThemes. I figured it was a long shot, but in a surprisingly short time I got an email back from Adii, a self-described WordPress Rock Star and one of the WooThemes‘ founders. He agreed to help out, for a lot less than what I was quoted for a custom design. Granted, I could’ve spent very little money to do everything myself using WooThemes, but I still decided to hire Adii.

Adii spared me a lot of time by setting up the hosting, installing the theme, adding my logo and color scheme, activating some essential plugins and even tying into a third-party email campaign system I use. Even with Adii doing the bulk of the work, I still invested many hours overseeing the job and testing the site.

Overall, the process went smoothly. Inevitably, though, I hit a snag or two along the way to launching the site. I had trouble uploading images, and when Adii wasn’t readily available to fix the issue I asked another developer for help using the WooThemes‘ support forum. That person was able to fix the images problem, but unfortunately he wiped out my logo and the email signup box! I accepted responsibility for not waiting on Adii, which is a lesson for anyone launching a new website: Be patient. Stuff will happen, and haste makes waste. Too many people working on the same files is a recipe for disaster.

Once everything was working correctly, I started adding pages and content to the site. As I said, WordPress is pretty good and user-friendly, on the whole.

My biggest gripes revolve around actually inputting content (copy) and uploading images. As anyone who has written for the web knows, it’s trouble to use Microsoft Word and then copy-and-paste into WordPress. Even in HTML/text mode in WordPress, many characters get mangled in the process.

At first, I opted to first write my articles in Google Docs, but also found some formatting and copying-and-pasting to be quirky. Then I switched to TextEdit (I’m on a Mac), but again found some gremlins creeping in. It became a tedious process of pasting text in WordPress, saving in “unpublished” mode and previewing each article (repeatedly) to check the formatting.

Finally, I started typing all articles first into TextMate, which seems to be working better than any of the above methods. I also use BlogAssist and TextExpander to quickly type common HTML tags, like commands for bold, italics, links and paragraphs. I wrap all of my content in tags in TextMate, beforeI copy anything into WordPress. I strongly encourage anyone who is thinking about blogging to become familiar with how to use these basic HTML tags, at a minimum. You can add tags right in WordPress, but the editing window is small and not a great place to spending editing your text.

I’m sure there are probably easier ways to get raw content into WordPress, but for now these are my personal preferences. I also know there are other tools that you can use to post content via a web browser or email, but I am too picky about the way I want things to look to pursue these options.

In terms of images, I think WordPress makes it a bit difficult to upload and assign images within posts. Some of WordPress’ built-in tools just don’t work well, so I find myself having to manually copy the full URL of each image that I upload and add this entire string as the image reference. It’s also important to size and compress images properly, before uploading them to WordPress.

To sum up, WordPress is a fantastic platform for launching a blog or small website. However, it does come with a learning curve, especially if you are a novice with server lingo/setup or HTML. It pays to get someone to help you get it set up correctly from the start. And later, you need to learn or brush up on some simple HTML and photo editing techniques. Otherwise, you might get frustrated at wacky formatting or images when creating your blog masterpieces.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetheriot

Note: This is part of an ongoing series of articles that chronicles the steps taken to create WebBusinessFreedom.com.

So you want to start a website? There are an overwhelming number of options available, both in terms of the software you’ll use for the initial setup and ongoing maintenance, and the hosting platform or environment where your site will live.

It can frankly lead to analysis paralysis trying to pick the “best” system to use. There is no 100% perfect system out there. But some are more user-friendly (especially for beginners) than others.

For a lot of people (including me) WordPress just makes good sense. If you’re primarily starting a blog, WordPress is open source (i.e., free) and is the top blogging software of choice. Alternatives include Blogger (also free) and Typepad (various paid versions from $4.95+ per month). I’ve used both Blogger and Typepad but kept coming back to WordPress.

Why WordPress? For me, the main advantages are:

• It’s free (but not necessarily, depending on which version you use…more on that in a moment)
• There are thousands of excellent design templates or layouts available for WordPress
• There are dozens of plugins and widgets that enhance the features of WordPress
• It is very customizable
• It is (relatively) easy to install
• It is (relatively) simple to use it to add, edit and delete content

Besides being good for a basic blog, WordPress is decent to use with any basic website. That said, it is not for everyone (look elsewhere if you need advanced databases in your site, for example), and it is not as easy to implement or use as some may lead you to believe. To take full advantage of WordPress, you’re going to need to get your hands in some HTML code at some point, or have someone who knows some hosting and programming basics help you out.

WordPress: Where To Start

There are actually two flavors of WordPress, and they can be confusing to the uninitiated. There’s a free, hosted version at WordPress.com, and a free, downloadable version at WordPress.org. The main difference is, with the first version the WordPress organization does all the heavy lifting, and you don’t have to install anything or worry about hosting. With the second version, you have to physically download the software and then upload and install it on the right kind of web server that is capable of running WordPress (it requires PHP and MySQL).

The folks at WordPress actually do a great job here of explaining the differences between the two versions.

The real crux of the matter lies in the control you want or need to have over your site. If you just want something up fast and aren’t worried about the ability to really control or customize your website, go with the free hosted version. Otherwise, you are much, much better off in the long run using the download-and-install route (.org version) despite a steeper learning curve. You’ll only be able to control the look-and-feel and functionality of your site using WordPress.org.

And here’s something that is not at all obvious—it’s actually ideal to set up a free WordPress (.com) account first, even if you don’t ever actually make use of a site there! The reason is that this is the only way to get a WordPress API key (a special code that will allow you to use services and enhancements built on the .com platform) while still hosting your blog elsewhere. This is extremely valuable, especially in order to use WordPress’ anti-spam service known as Akismet. And it can’t hurt to set up your free (.com) account, especially if you’re new to WordPress and want to play around. Go ahead, you can mess around as much as you want and it won’t cost you a dime.

After setting up a free WordPress account (the .com site), you have two choices to get the “real thing,” the full downloaded version of the WordPress software. The simplest option is to find a web hosting company that comes with WordPress pre-installed, or via a “one-click installation” type of service. WordPress suggests some web hosts, and there are plenty of others out there who are WordPress-friendly. (The host for Web Business Freedom is Fused Network.)

The second option is to physically download WordPress and install it on your web hosting server. This is a lot trickier and not for the techno-phobic at heart. Michael Pollock of Solostream.com has put together a great step-by-step WordPress installation guide and accompanying screencast.

Once it is installed, the real fun begins! In the next article, I’ll talk about the basics of using WordPress, including selecting the design, adding site content and enhancing your site’s functionality with plugins and widgets.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2140391908/sizes/m