In my previous Post Challenges of Starting a new website Part 1.  I talked about my new website My Weekend Trip Planner and how difficult it is to get your website discovered.  It is very difficult to get that initial traffic to the sight especially because SEO is really hurt by the fact that the site is so new. It is important to build the traffic to your site at least initially through other sources then just search engine.  These ways can be things like word or mouth or paid advertisements.  One of the ways I have found that works the best is social media.  Social media is extremely important especially for discovering a website.  You need to use social media to create a buzz for example on My Weekend Trip Planner when I launched the site I changed my status on Facebook to announce the launch of my new site.  I also tweeted it.  I received 30 visits from that in 4 hours.  This is perfect example of you can use social media to tell people about your site hopefully they will then tell their friends and the result can be viral.  This will then increase the likely hood people liking to you and before you know have a powerful website.

The competition for small businesses is intense.  The are faced with competition in every area.  A lot of their competition is from big corporations that have large marketing budgets and better name recognition.  The odds are against them but one thing that does level the playing field slightly is the web.  Although large companies do still have the advantage the internet is big enough for small business to cut out a nice market for themselves.  Unfortunately small business often make key mistakes that force them out of the market.  Here are some common mistakes small business make:

• ignore the importance of the internet
• poor maintenance of a site
• Not advertising the site
• ignore local submissions sites
• ignore monitoring and analyzing results

The Chinese government has had a long-running history of restricting and censoring the internet. From blocking access to Google search results, to censoring websites with information that it believes provide information that would undermine the authority of the Chinese government and culture, China makes sure that it keeps tight controls on what its citizens are able to do online. Many citizens, in a quest for free access to information, have responded to these restrictions by using VPN services to get access to the outside world.

Now, it seems, the Chinese government has decided to start a new round in the war for the internet in China. As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, China has begun clamping down access to the servers of companies that provide VPN services to Chinese citizens in an attempt to close the loopholes in its censorship regime. In addition, the government, which has always seemingly been at odds with Google, has apparently begun carefully disabling certain portions of Google’s popular Gmail service. Google has accused China of disabling Gmail in a way that makes it look like a technical error on Google’s part rather than all-out censorship. Google has previously accused the Chinese government of hacking into its Gmail system to compromise the privacy of Google’s users.

Only time will tell how this new round of restrictions and regulations will play out in China. Hopefully, in the long run, the government will back down on its restrictions and allow its people free and open access to the internet.

I just spent the last two hours researching information about Xtranormal.  I have watched about 10 of their movies, and I can honestly say now that . . . I have a terrible headache.  I was not impressed with Xtranormal.  At all!  The videos are cheap and tacky.  I did smirk once, but that was about it.  It is definitely not worth the headache I have or the time I wasted.  I tried to see if other people felt similar to me, and to be honest I did not find much information on anything.  So maybe I am alone in my hatred.  I did find a lot of negative feedback on how Xtranormal has started charging for their services and people are really up in arms about it.  Well I am not really that bummed that it is not free anymore.  I feel that this type of video is unique at best.  If it is funny, it is only because the monotone characters are saying ridiculous things while having no emotion, and it is no unlike life it seem absurd to us.  I guess sometimes it is good to be really bad at something.  Xtranormal is popular because it is so bad at making videos.  I think a lot of xtranormal’s success has been because of the novelty.  People saw it and want to try it, but now that a lot of the features cost money it is not as appealing.  People are not going to use it and thankfully it will die out.  The Internet is an open source community and when companies try to start charging people start looking for free replacements.  I can only hope that people don’t find one and the whole fade just dies out. If, however, businessmen were interested in making use of it I would say don’t.  I don’t think it is professional and it looks cheap.  There are so so so so so many better ways to make your sight entertaining and memorable.

1. Marketing and Communication:

As a small business company or a large business you can use twitter to advertise and provide information to your customers through a popular site easily.

2. Easy Blogging:

It is the easiest and most basic form of blogging out there.

3. Business networking:

Twitter is a informal type of social media networking and can be used to develop business relationships or ventures.

4. Breaking News and Gossip:

It can be used between family members to tell each other of important things that happened in the last week or it could be used for big companies telling of their new product that they are developing.

5. Streamlining Social Media:

You can use Twitter for email type chatting, for chatting, and instant messaging. So instead of using a bunch of different programs you could just end up using Twitter.