You may have been in a situation where you worked with a web guy to create your website. However, somewhere along the line you both stopped working together, either by flat out firing him, or just simply by him (or you) being pulled in other directions.

Either way, the outcome of this type of situation is usually that you have paid for a website but can't seem to gain access to the files, make changes, etc. When you hire a friend or another web guy to make changes, you may have had to start from scratch.

Setup Your Own Website Hosting

First, when you setup a website, setup your own "website hosting" instead of having the web designer set it up. You can use GoDaddy.com or any other web host in most cases, but the most important part is that you will own the hosting account and control it…not your web designer.

By the way, feel free to ask for your web guy's guidance in which hosting account to purchase, but do the actual purchase / registration on your own credit card in your own name. You can then simply provide a login to your web guy.

Register Your Own Website Address

Secondly, you need to confirm that you own the website address registration as well. This is done by either registering the website through your hosting account or through an external website, such as namecheap.com.

What I recommend doing is (1) signing up for your own website hosting account, at the direction of your web guy and (2) registering your website through this hosting account, at the direction of your web guy. Regardless of who does the actual registering, you need to be sure that at the end of the day, the web hosting account is in your name, your website address is registered to your web hosting account, and that you control the usernames/passwords for the accounts.

Get The Source Files- You Paid For The Work

Lastly, make clear to the web designer that you expect to be provided with the photoshop source files for your website, along with any other source files. This will make it so that you have all the files for the website in a single place. Download all of these files (source files, website files, image files, etc.) to your computer as a backup when the project is completed so that you have all of them available. Some web designers might cringe at this request, but you need to be firm and simply let them know that you want to have all the project files in a single location and in your control and can't move forward on a project without them. It's only fair that you receive all of the web files since you're paying them for the project.

More tips coming soon in part II of this blog post...

On SearchEngineLand.com, a popular SEO / Internet Marketing website, I read an article where Danny Sullivan basically (1) calls out Bill Gates for being an SEO "newbie" and (2) provides a pretty detailed "here's what you need to change on your blog" analysis / gameplan.

The Background...

Bill Gates has a blog where he shares some of his thoughts with the world. Long story short, this blog is outranked by many fake blogs (i.e. not written by Bill Gates) if you go to Google (or Bing) and type "Bill Gates Blog".

Much of the problem is caused by Bill Gates' real blog not utilizing basic SEO best practices. He hasn't taken the time to do the basics of SEO on his blog and it's hurting his search engine results.

I'm not going to spend this entire blog posts explaining why Bill Gates' SEO on his blog is wrong: that type of article is at SearchEngineLand.com. Instead, I want you to read this article and learn an important aspect of successful blogging.

One effective way to make an article go "viral", which means spreading around the internet very quickly, is to cause a bit of controversy. Bill Gates' blog lacks some of the most basic SEO principles, things that are extremely easy to fix. SearchEngineLand.com called Bill out on this fact, provided a detailed explanation of what he needs to do, and did it all in a professionally acceptable way. SearchEngineLand.com called out one of the most successful businessmen in the world and showed him a thing or two in their blog post, thus boosting their own credibility along the way.

Do you see anywhere in your industry where the big companies are making some pretty newbie mistakes? How could you constructively "show them a thing or two"?

You could also connect things that are happening outside of your industry (such as politics, etc.) to your industry / company, although this takes a bit more of a creative writing approach. That's a blog for another day ; )

Guy seems to be the guy that you hear about everything from (if you follow him). By this, I'm basically saying that Guy is the person that you hear about so many things from first, although he's not the direct author of many of the things he refernces on AllTop.com

Let me break down how I view his Twitter strategy:

(1) He (and his team) finds content on the web that would interest readers of his website, Alltop.com

(2) He writes a brief 3-5 sentence summary of this post on AllTop.com which is very fast to do.

(3) He tweets about this blog post to his huge Twitter / Facebook following.

The most important takeaway I want you to get from this blog post is this.

Guy is benefiting from being the "hub" of so much information online, but he doesn't have to be a massive content producing machine spending 24 hours a day blogging and tweeting.

Using this type of strategy, you can be viewed as the most "in tune" person in your industry, on top of everything that's going on, and nice enough to spend "so much of your personal time" sharing this helpful information with your associates in the industry. However, in reality you might only be spending 2-3 hours per week putting all of this together if you're using the right tools.

I've been perfecting a social media strategy along these lines on my own web businesses in addition to a few client projects. I'll start posting some of the insights I'm learning here on the blog as things unfold.

I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts in the comments of this post.

I read a Mashable.com today that cited 5 tips small businesses need to follow as a guideline to getting involved with social media: have a plan, take small steps toward your goal, put time into it, and be flexible.

In working with clients, I stress to them that the most important factor of success in a small business social media campaign is going in with a firm and realistic plan and implementing that plan.

Most businesses get a Twitter account or FaceBook account and start Tweeting and friending people. Needless to say, a strategy that won't get results.

Don't start joining social media sites just for the heck of it. You need to have an expert plan of how you're going to utilize social media in your marketing.

I'm planning on putting together more blog posts that outline specifics of social media strategy. But I'm curious to hear from you.

What good and bad moves have you experienced or seen in social media?

Initially, I thought to myself that most businesses don't need an iPhone app. I figured this type of tool would be more useful to techy or web-based companies.

But I got to thinking...

Regardless of what market you are in, there is always new information coming into the industry that your customers would care about. With the simple iPhone apps provided by AppMakr.com, you could create a way to be the source of industry information for your clients.

Let's say your a small business accountant. There is always new tax news and general business news that your customers may be somewhat interested in. Using an iPhone app, you could provide a quick and easy (and possibly daily way) to keep in touch with your customers by providing this news to them.

They would open the app and be able to see posts that you've placed on your website blog about industry news. I'll spare you the technical mumbo jumbo, but you could easily create an app that simply pulls the articles you place on your website and shows them on your customer's iPhones.

This app marketing tactic falls back on something I've been researching lately: it seems that people more often remember who they heard information from, not who actually authored the original information.

The blog post you're reading right now is an example.

I'm willing to bet that if someone asks you at any point in the near future about where to start in wanting to make an iPhone app for their small business, then you're going to think of this blog post you're reading right now. In addition, I'd be willing to bet that you'll remember that it was Jon Tucker (me) that showed you the AppMakr.com tool.

I'm not saying that using this iPhone app strategy is going to make or break your marketing success. However, I always encourage clients to be aware of the possibilities that are out there and to consider everything. This is something that's actually very easy to integrate into your marketing campaigns.

I'm testing this with a client and will keep you posted on progress. For now, I'd love to hear your initial thoughts on this marketing tactic in the comments below.

This tactic can apply to almost any business. I'm going to use an example of a wedding planner, wedding photographer, or anyone else that is involved in the running of a wedding.

In this example, we want to be able to connect with people that are going to be married at some point in the near future. These are our prospective customers that could utilize our services.

We want to find people that:
-are getting married in the near future
-are probably planning a wedding
-and are located within 30 miles from San Diego, CA (in this particular example)

But how do you find these people?

Using search features of Twitter, I'm able to search through all of Twitter and find people based on what they've said, where they're located, etc.

For example, if someone says the word fiance, then they're going to be getting married at some point in the near future. If someone says "spent a relaxing afternoon with my fiance at home", then they are someone we want to reach (assuming they're located in San Diego).

The way that I do this is by typing the following words into Search.Twitter.com.

"fiance" near:92109 within:30miles

This will produce a list of people that have said the word fiance on their twitter account and are located within 30 miles of the 92109 zipcode (in San Diego).

But Everyone Isn't a Prospect

At that point, you would want to sort through the results Twitter provides to find people that fit your target market. For example, not everyone that says "fiance" is someone that you want to contact. As you read through the Twitter results, you'll realize that some people are talking about friends' fiances or completely unrelated topics.

Go to search.twitter.com and start browsing around to find people that are related to your business based on various things that they say.

I'll be showing you how to actually market effectively to these prospects in a future blog post, but you can contact me here with questions. I'd be happy to discuss this with you.

The success of this campaign really does amaze me. How could other non-profits in your area use this strategy on a local level to raise funds for their cause?

It may not be $3,000,000 for a worldly disaster like the Haiti earthquake, but this style of campaign could be used to generate donations from local citizens for a local charity.

Looking forward to seeing your thoughts in the comments below.

Do you listen to music or talk radio when driving? Do you read blogs and web content a lot?

Would you use something like this to "read" web content while you're on the road?

Share your thoughts in the comments area.

I find it amazing the various things apps are being developed for. This is something I'm sure will continue to grow in coming years, especially considering Google's recent entry into the smartphone market.

What are the best apps you've seen? Share them in the comments and we'll start to see which apps all of you are interested in.

Do you work in public places sometimes? What are some of the better and worse places you've been? How would you compare your productivity between working at home versus working in public cafes?