Google + - Do You Need It?

I've been watching from afar my oft referred to friends, the techno-savvy-guru-geeky-in the know-digitized  very smart ones talking about Google +.  I mean that with all the reverence my little heart can muster.  If I call you a techno/savvy/guru/geek, please know that this is a term of Highest Designation and Affectionate Awe!  


Apparently...it's WHO you know, folks!

So I go on Google + and am informed that I am not eligible but will be informed when it's open to the public. #rejection. So I consider Who I can Grovel To to ask for an invite just to be cool. Finally! Last night my wonderful new friend Mary sent me an invite!  Wiping the sweat of rejection off my diminished ego, I shout "Yes!" to no one in particular and go on there.   First off, "Mary" is nowhere to be found and my inbox is indeed full of people who quite awhile ago had already invited me into their inner sanctums.

Alas, I am still working my way through SEO on my Shop and am nowhere near being finished with that!
So I go on there and discover that it is quite like facebook, which took me awhile to master but now my friends think I'm quite the guru myself. Ha!  It's all relative, folks!

So now we're dealing with "circles" and I can see how they might indeed be effective especially for privacy settings.   But I am not especially happy about my old Picasa photo account with all my ancient blog posts with dirty kitchens being aired.  So, we might have to hold off airing ourselves to all cyberspace and business networks until we can get tidied up just a tad.

Have you heard about Google Plus?  Will you use it?  If you aleady are, what do you think?  Should you switch over and work less  on Facebook?  How is it helping you to grow your business or blogging?

I would love to hear!

In other news, I had a new wholesale account inquiry buy a bunch of fall and Christmas samples from me, so I am hoping and praying it all pans out.   The lady has 3 stores that must be doing quite well, so that's good to hear!  And my Etsy Sales have picked up and I am recovering from my dismal feelings of obscurity, rejection and disheartenment.   It's just so hard to plan sometimes when you just. don't. know.

In other news, Don is trying to bust his blustery way into the Gulf with landfall tomorrow night.  We've been praying about that one.  No thank you, we will take the Rain Only but Hold the Hurricane Force Winds!

Next month will be very busy for me so it's time to get the kitchen all cleaned up and organized, and get our new fall schedule buttoned down!  

We still want to get out of town for a few days and are looking for a deal of some kind for us as a family.  We feel we need to get away for just a few days before school starts.  If you know of any deals, please be sure to holler!

Well, just a quickie post friends!  Wanted to get your take on the new Google Plus!

XO!

Pandas + Farmers + GOOGLE, Oh My!!!!!

TIME to let the cat out of the bag.  If you're not involved in e-commerce, skip THIS.  But if you are, you are already affected by this. So read on, dear friend!

I was "cookin' with gas" building my little biz , enjoying a growing customer base,rave reviews, lots of compliments. Not gangbusters, but budding + blossoming just like the springtime around me.
Then all of a sudden, one day B O O M.   Nothing. NO THING NaDA Zippo, Zip. Zero -0-

Overnight I'm hidden, invisible. Transparent, Naked, Null.Void. Enough adjectives. I began digging + watching + waiting + talking + digging  more. Finally, yesterday, I found IT.   A kind Esty Seller filled us in..
Her name is Mary, from Park Ridge, Illinois, and her company name is SEOWebDesign to help people like me in our Search Engine Optimization and web presence.  Mary also has a graphics design shop called
Wings Dove.....I am planning on getting Mary to help me in the very near future!  Book your slot with her today!

Now  I know nothing about algorithms; barely passed higher math in favor of honors English, Geometry, College Microbiology which I also aced.  Any geeks out there, feel free to fill me in on Algorithms.  Apparently Google runs on one, and apparently it changes from time to time.

Google Panda Update and E-Commerce: "

Clipped from: www.doubleplus.com (share this clip)

I hope this little article helps you.   It surely helped me.

One one note, it is a GOOD CHANGE.   This keeps us authentic, which is something that I search my heart on daily.  It causes us to Dig Deep and make sure we are being our authentic selves.  More on that later. I promise!

Cheers and keywords and seo to you my friend.  Luckily I have found help because it is just outside my sphere of how to's.  Not only do we need to have a great product, awesome packaging, stellar customer service, a friendly smile with a blog to match, but we also have to understand market changes and all the things that make these algorithms run and now how they affect us personally in terms of being seen in the vast global marketplace.   So take your energy drink and dive in!

So fair reader, thanks for stopping by today, and for sitting a spell in My Kitchen, I surely do vastly
appreciate having you as a friend, and I mean that from the bottom of my little heart!

XOXO!

What do YOU think about this post?  Have you seen a change in your business in the past 60 days?
Is this information new to you?   What have you done to resolve any negative impacts it had in your business?
Comment, and share with all of us!

Why This and Your Blogs are So Very Important,,,"They" Say!

Six Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
— It’s much more important that those young whippersnappers--Twitter and Facebook We often talk about the need to develop a content marketing mindset. This requires companies to think like publishers. And that sounds an awful lot like social media as Wikipedia defines it:

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers.

Your blog is your secret social media weapon
Thanks to free or inexpensive blogging tools, any individual can be on the same technological footing as the New York Times or Business Week. That may seem relatively obvious to many of you. What I think is less obvious is that your blog is every bit as much a social media tool such as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace. In fact, I believe that a blog is the most important social media weapon in your arsenal.