Not too long after I set up my WordPress blogs, I started getting comments on the blog.  At first it was just a few.  And then it was a lot of them.  I was spending a lot of time reviewing comments for approval.  As I looked at the comments I was getting, a lot of them had strange names and URLs on them.  The comments themselves were kind of bland and could apply to any blog post on any topic.  It became clear that I was being spammed.  With the time I was spending reviewing the comments, it was clear that I needed to do something about it.

Fortunately, there’s a WordPress plugin for that.  Akismet provides automatic spam checking for your WordPress blog.  It’s free for personal blog.  If your blog has a business purpose, then they ask that you to sign up for a Pro plan for $5.00 a month.  So far, only a few spam comments have gotten through since setting up the Akismet plugin.  The time saved is more than worth the fee.

I’d been troubled the past couple days by a computer virus.  I’ve got Microsoft Security Essentials installed on my computer, and it was detecting a virus during Outlook’s Send/Receive process.  Since it kept happening every time a Send/Receive was done, I did full scans with Symantec, Malwarebytes, Microsoft Security Essentials.  Nothing was found during any of these scans.  This morning, I found my way to the Microsoft virus site and ended up spending the next three hours with a Microsoft tech remotely operating my computer.  Fortunately, this was a free service.  At the end of my session, he told me that the problem was likely on my mail host.  He told me to take it up with them.

After reporting the problem to the mail host, I had a hunch to check the webmail of the problem email account.  There were over 100 emails in the webmail account.  It should have been empty since emails are automatically deleted after Outlook downloads them.  The oldest email was a spam and likely the infected culprit.  I deleted and purged it and several other emails in the webmail account that I did not need.  After that, Outlook Send/Receive functioned properly.  Apparently, Microsoft Security Essentials had been doing its job and stopping the virus at the gate.  If you haven’t done so already, I strongly suggest that you download Microsoft Security Essentials.  It’s free, and it works.

In case you’re wondering, the virus being detected was Trojan:JS/Iframeinject.O.  According to Microsoft Security Essentials, the Alert Level for the virus is Severe.  The virus is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker.

The social media platforms are about connecting with others and creating an interactive relationship.  If you are using social media for marketing purposes, it might be a good idea to take a look at the language you’re using to describe what you’re doing.  I’ve been listening to presentations on the Six Figure Success Without Selling Your Soul event presented by Maggie Ostara, Ph.D.  One of today’s speakers was Anastasia Netri of Entrepreneurial Goddess.  She suggested some alternate language to use when approaching marketing.  Try using the following language transformations and see how your relationship with your community changes.

Carolyn Herfurth of the biztruth has an interesting strategy for encouraging comments on her blog.  She offers brief PDF freebies.  For instance, she sent a free copy of “10 Things to Never Ever Say in a Sales Call” for commenting on a blog entry about engaging customers by asking them questions.  The freebie consisted of the tips plus a one or two sentence comment about each of them.  It was short, easy to prepare, and effective.  I felt that it was worth making the comment to get the freebie.  This is a great way to find out what is on the mind of your readers.

I have been following FlyLady (Marla Cilley) almost since the beginning of her business more than ten years ago, before it even was a business.  When I told her that I was writing a blog post about her business, she offered to give me an interview.  Thank you, Marla, for the interview!

It all started on the forum at the Sidetracked Home Executives (SHE) site back in 2009.  Members were asking for help with setting up their routines.  FlyLady came up with the idea of using the calendar feature on the Internet group site, One List, to remind herself and other homemakers to do their “home blessings” (regular cleaning routines).  One List then became Egroups, and then it was bought out by Yahoo.  I joined when the group was on Yahoo.  FlyLady had posted the invitation on the SHE site.  In the early years, volunteers helped FlyLady moderate and manage the service.  In time, the Yahoo FlyLady group became Yahoo’s largest group subscription service.  FlyLady has since moved her email subscription service to Big Tent where it has continued to grow.

In the beginning, there were no products.  This was strictly a free service on a free website that FlyLady set up to share with her friends.  She had some basic documents with tips on how to tackle clutter and do “home blessings” posted in the reference section of the group.  The materials were used and expanded to create her book, Sink Reflections.  The basic principles of her system are also documented on the Beginner BabySteps page on her site.  The most important babysteps, according to FlyLady, are wearing lace-up shoes, putting reminder Post-It notes around the house where you can see them, and going to bed at a decent hour.  When a FlyBaby is not succeeding at the system, the FlyBaby is usually neglecting one of these things.  FlyLady asked me about the shoes and caught me not wearing them.  She wagged her mommy finger at me and chastised me about that!

FLY stands for “Finally Loving Yourself.”  FlyLady uses the subscription service to send out testimonials from FlyBabies who were using her system.  The testimonials are an important part of the system because they help to FlyWash a better mindset about taking care of our homes and ourselves.  FlyLady says that those who choose not to read the emails are missing out on an important part of the service.

FlyLady wrote about products she was using to help her do her “home blessings,” and soon she was selling some of them on a website, FlyLady.net.  The first product was a cute little vinyl FlyLady cling intended to remind “FlyBabies” to “bless” their homes.  Soon after, the feather duster, timer, and calendar were added as FlyLady saw a need for them.  Some of the testimonials now included references to the products she sold.  Additional products were added over the years.  With the products, the service began generating an income.  The volunteers now became employees.

As of this writing, FlyLady has 25,000 followers on Twitter and 204,000 followers on Facebook, but email remains her primary means of communicating with her FlyBabies with 654,000 subscribers on Big Tent.  Along the way, FlyLady also began broadcasting on blogtalkradio where she chats live with her FlyBabies.  As FlyLady says, “Email is still the most powerful way to communicate with your audience.  Our emails get comments for three days.  Facebook is about an hour and Twitter is two minutes.  LOL  We get around 10,000 emails a day from our members.  We were blogging before blog was even a word.”

Along the way, FlyLady added joint ventures.  Leanne Ely, The Dinner Diva, provides daily meal plans via email.  Jonathan Roche of The No Excuses Workout System (NEWO) motivates his followers to pursue physical fitness and eliminate “body clutter.”  Cozi is the online FlyLady organizer.  Missus Smarty Pants gives wardrobe advice.  FlyLady’s business began as friends helping friends and has since evolved into a profitable business with employees.  Helping people is and always has been the primary purpose of FlyLady.  She does so with humor and love.

Let’s say you’re feeling very inspired and you write a bunch of posts within a short time to put on your blog.  If you published them all at once, you would overwhelm your followers, and you don’t want to do that.  Also, you know there are times when you aren’t so inspired and you don’t write as often.  You’d like to schedule out your posts so that they are delivered over time.  So what do you do?  Go ahead and enter them into your WordPress blog.  In the Publish box on the right side of the screen, it will say, “Publish immediately” with an Edit link after it.  You can use the Edit link to set the date and time that the post will be published.  Then click OK.  Now, the blue button in the Publish box will say “Schedule” instead of “Publish.”  Using this feature, you can spread out the publishing of your posts.

If you are using the Twitter Tools plugin to publish your posts to Twitter, the tweet will be published the first time your blog is viewed after your scheduled date and time.  If the readership on your blog is still low, you will want to make sure to visit your site so that the tweet will get posted.  NetworkedBlogs will pull in the blog post on its own schedule.  It is possible that NetworkedBlogs’ pull will trigger the tweet, but I do not know this for sure.  I don’t know how NetworkedBlogs pulls in the posts.  However it is doing it, that activity is not registering on my StatCounter logs.

I use the NetworkedBlogs app on Facebook to automatically pull my blog content to my Facebook page.  To get more information about it and set it up, go to the NetworkedBlogs page.  I’ve noticed that blog posts aren’t shown on Facebook right away.  Apparently, NetworkedBlogs polls your blog for new posts on its own schedule.  If you’re feeling impatient, you can go to your blog’s page on NetworkedBlogs and click “Pull Now.”

The app also presents other’s blogs for you to read and follow.  It will ask you to choose five blogs to follow as part of the setup process.  I was able to finish setting up my blog feed without selecting any, but my guess is that your blog will get better exposure if you follow some blogs.  I’ll be choosing blogs to follow, but I’m going to take my time at it.  I look forward to sharing and tweeting about blog posts that inspire me.  If I like them, surely others will, too.

The Contact Me page on my blog is set up with the Fast Secure Contact Form plugin.  I like using contact forms because I want people to be able to contact me, but I don’t want spammers to harvest my email address.  The contact form also implements a Captcha to prevent spamming spiders from filling in the contact form automatically.  I’ve had contact forms without Captcha and found that most of the email coming in from them was from spammers.  Implementing a Captcha cut that significantly.

When we want to look at the effectiveness of our efforts, it’s great to have statistics.  I have been using StatCounter statistics for quite some time now.  StatCounter can be implemented on just about any kind of website.  I’ve even used it with Google Blogger blogs.  They have special instructions for setting it up in WordPress and a WordPress plugin for completing the process.  The counter can be invisible or you can choose from a number of icons to show on your site.  You can choose whether to show the actual counts as well.  The service will log up to the 500 most recent hits for free.  If you want to see data for more hits, you can upgrade your account for a price.  You can track multiple projects within the same account.  Check out the demo.  My favorite page is Visitor Paths.  I can see where my visitors are coming from, how they are navigating through my site, and what they click on to exit my site.  Don’t worry—it doesn’t tell me who they are!

I chose to use the SexyBookmarks plugin by Shareaholic to display the icons at the bottom of the posts.  This plugin has a lot of different options.  If you don’t find the option you’re looking for, there are a few more ideas for code hacks on their blog.  It has optional hand-written graphics above the icons encouraging readers to share the post.  The icons themselves have a bit of flash to them.  Try hovering your mouse over them and see what happens.  The plugin allows the administrator to choose which URL shortener he would like to use.

The icons in the sidebar were coded in HTML in a text widget—nothing fancy there.