In one of my recent posts, “History of the world wide web,” which isn’t anything original but more of a compilation of other histories of the internet plus a couple observations of my own, it becomes very apparent how one person, or a small team of people can indeed change the world.

Regardless of your political opinions, we can certainly all agree that Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney played significant roles in changing the world as we know it.  Imagine if Al Gore had been elected instead of George Bush.  Who knows how or what the world would look right now but it would likely be different – good or bad, right or wrong, it would have been different.

It is too early to tell now that the election,  inuaguration  and President Obama’s brief honeymoon is over, to see what kind of an impact that He will have on this world.  But certainly, most of the world is expecting Him to change it.  After all, He did run on the position of change … yes, you can, and His presidential transition website was appropriately named, Change.gov.

But, I’m not here to write or talk about politics.  I would prefer to talk about the web, small business, entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, social marketing and how key people have changed out lives and our lifestyle and how you, as visitors to my website, can change the world as well.

Referring back to my earlier post, “History of the world wide web,” we can see how various people played various roles with regard to the internet and how the internet has completely changed the way we live.  Imagine living without e-mail, the web, automatic bill pay, Google and wikipedia.  Would our lives be simpler … or more complex and difficult without these tools?

It’s certainly a lot simpler for me to set all of my recurring bills on automatic bill-pay.  I don’t have to waste time writing checks, licking stamps or worrying about forgetting to mail a letter.

Thanks to Steve Jobs (and we wish him well as he recovers from his health issues), my iPhone has become an extraordinarily valuable asset and simplifier for my daily life.  My iPhone’s alarm clock wakes me up in the morning and lets me know when I need to rush out of the house so I won’t miss my bus.  Before I leave, my iPhone tells me what kind of weather I can expect so I know what clothes to wear.  On my way to work, I can check my e-mail, get an update on the New York Times or USA Today.  I can check up on what my sister and daughter are doing by looking at their Facebook page.  I can instant message my wife to tell her that I’m only a few minutes from home – open up that bottle of wine!  I can place a call from my iPhone to my friends in Colombia (South America), who pick up their phone that is connected to the internet using Voice Over IP (VOIP). 

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, who created Facebook while a student at Harvard as he was trying to get over a girlfriend, I now have a way to more easily stay in touch with my parents, siblings and children and we can all better know what is going on in each other’s lives, especially when life becomes so crazy and busy that we don’t always call or visit as often as we should or would like.

In Hollywood, which is distinctively American, we’ve also got wonderful role models like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie and hundreds of others who are using their fame and fortune to help change the world in a positive way.  Combine that with some incredible athletes and social entrepreneurs who are also using their celebrity-like status, fame and fortune to help change the world in a positive way. 

The reason why I am an entrepreneur at heart and love working with other entrepreneurs is because we all want to change the world in some small way. 

So, if you want to change the world too, please bookmark this site on Delicious.com or Digg.com or link to us from your blog or add us to your blogroll.  Perhaps we can inspire somebody else to change the world too.

Small business start-up advice and guidance

Business.gov, an initiative by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has recently launched a Gov 2.0 community website for entrepreneurs, business professionals and those thinking about starting a business to introduce themselves, get business advice, give business advice and take advantage of the programs provided by the U.S. government to facilitate the growth and development of small businesses across America.

It is widely known that small businesses account for the bulk of innovation and new jobs created in this country.  The United States of America is a land of opportunity founded on the principles of entrepreneurship.  In no other place in the world is it so easy to create a business and be wildly successful regardless of your race, ethnicity, cultural heritage, religion, sex, sexual orientation or age.

When you visit Community.Business.Gov, you will find tools and resources:

• Find loans and grants
• Obtain licenses and permits
• Become energy efficient

In addition, this website provide a forum for comments and questions.  Some of the popular discussion topics include:

• Introduce yourself
• Starting and registering a business
• Self employed and home based businesses
• Loans, grants and taxes
• Government contracting
• Government resources for businesses

Visit this website and let us know if you found it helpful.

Work – Live – Play in Reston Town Center

Although our roots are in Los Angeles, our seeds have dropped in Washington DC and we have found Reston Town Center to be the ideal work, live, place to be.  Between web designs we can stroll out to Starbucks for a capuccino or Jackson’s for Happy Hour or the fountain to just soak up the sun.

We find Reston Town Center to be relaxing, artistic and inspirational.  It is a vibrant microcosm bustling with business professionals on the way to and from lunch, moms’ groups getting together to swap baby stories, children playing in the water fountains or teens lining up for movies.

You know that Reston Town Center is the epicenter of the Dulles Technology Corridor when Google leases prime office space here.  Look around at the top of the buildings and you will see other world brands including Oracle, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Accenture, Rolls-Royce, Titan, L3 Communications, Nextel, Northrop Grumman and a host of other companies that call Reston Town Center their  home or home away from home.

So, if you are looking for a Washington DC web desiginer that lives on the Virginia side of the water and is a hop, skip and a jump from Dulles airport, Tyson’s Corner and Washington DC, look no further.  inQbation is penetrating the Northern Virginia and Washington DC web design market with world-class designs, search engine optimization, Section 508 compliance for web accessibility and at prices you can well afford.

Government facebook, youtube, twitter, blogs, websites, profiles and accounts

Photo © Blake Newman 2005

Government Facebook pages, YouTube channels, Twitter

Matrix of federal government social media profiles and accounts

If you have anything to add, please let me know and help me update this matrix.

Put in my content

Is your website ready for takeoff?

You conceived a great website concept, selected the perfect web designer, agonized over design decisions, worked hard to get great images and content onto that website.  Finally, you are about to launch your website.  Well, hold off on the champagne.

Have you…

• Thought through your online marketing strategy?
• Defined your target audience?
• Figured out the right keywords?
• Search engine optimized your site?

Do you have…

• A social networking campaign?
• A social bookmarketing strategy?
• An online public relations plan?
• An inbound link strategy?
• Blogging agenda?

Does any of this terminology mean anything to you?

If you answered no 2 or more of these 10 questions then you might want to lower your expectations, set aside some resources to tackle these issues and/or rethink that website launch.

Ignite your performance

Ideally, you would have thought about many of these things before you even started your website design project.  But, it’s never too late to get on the right track.  Here are a few things you should consider before you get too far down the road.

Top 10 online marketing steps

1. Define your target market.
   1. Who, exactly, do you want to visit your site?
   2. What is your goal, purpose or mission for this set of visitors?
   3. What is the call to action, what do you want these visitors to do?
   4. What key words would these visitors Google to find sites like yours.
   5. Repeat sub-steps 1-4 for each market segment.
2. Optimize your site for the keywords identified above:
   1. Ensure your <title> tags contain these key words
   2. Ensure your <h1…h3> headers contain these words
   3. Ensure your images are named after these words
   4. Ensure the image ALT attributes contain these words
   5. Ensure your file path contains these words
   6. Ensure that you write topics about and that include these words
   7. Ensure that you use <strong> tags around these key words
   8. Ensure your bullet lists and ordered lists contain these key words
   9. Ensure that people use these words as anchor text when they link to you
3. Create social marketing profiles on sites like:
   1. LinkedIn
   2. FaceBook
   3. Flickr
   4. Twitter
   5. BizNik
   6. YouTube
   7. Seesmic
4. Submit and bookmark your pages on sites like:
   1. del.icio.us
   2. Digg
   3. Technorati
   4. Reddit
   5. StumbleUpon
5. Submit your URL to search engines:
   1. Google/addURL
   2. Yahoo/submit
   3. MSN (Live Search) URL Submission
6. Plan and execute your blog strategy:
   1. Determine the topics you want to cover
   2. Create a list of subjects that you can write about
   3. Stay focused to this set of topics and subjects
   4. Research your topics well
   5. Make sure you have a blog implemented on your site
   6. Write thoughtful, relevant and useful articles
   7. Complement these articles with compelling photos
   8. Reference third-party websites and sources
   9. Reference current affairs, hot topics and trends in your posts
   10. Write no less than once a month, preferably once or twice a week
   11. Submit articles to third-party sites along with your byline
7. Install Google analytics on your site
8. Test and analyze your site for SEO using SEO tools:
   1. WebsiteGrader
   2. Alexa
   3. SEOchat
   4. WebConfs
   5. SEOmoz
   6. iWebTool
   7. GoogleRankings
   8. ExactFactor
   9. SelfSEO
   10. LinkVendor
   11. SEObook
   12. SEOCompany
   13. SEOtoolset
   14. Raven SEO Tools
   15. Bad Neighborhood
   16. Whois
9. Create well-written handbooks, e-books and guides on PDFs with links to your site.
10. Get your family, friends, colleagues and associates involved:
    1. Ask everybody to bookmark your site on del.icio.us and other BM sites
    2. Ask everybody to Digg your articles and blog posts
    3. Get everybody to reference your site on Twitter
    4. Get co-workers to link to your site from their LinkedIn accounts
    5. Get everybody to submit your link from their Facebook pages
    6. Ask other friends who are bloggers to add you to their Blogroll