Hello!
Exciting News!!
We have MOVED this blog and ALL of the contents to a new blog at the following url:
Please update your bookmarks……….and Click Here to see you at the NEW Site!!
To Your Success!
Barbara
Archive for the ‘Five Star Seminars’ Category
Where Did My Website Go?
September 21, 2007
My last post let you in on great information that I learned when I went to another incredible Internet Marketing Bookcamp last week. Armed with a notebook thick with notes, the next logical step was to make my Do Lists while everything was fresh on my mind. I love learning! I love checking off everything I have accomplished on my Do Lists!
As I shared with you last time, watching and listening to website critiques and make-overs was brutal. We ( you and I ) design or choose website designs that WE like. We are supposed to create everything for YOU. Our visitors. Our readers. Our customers and clients.
I consider myself a “student of the business”, so my web designer and I started in on a major redesign for Five Star Seminars. After that brutal surgery, Colorado Safety Educators would come under the redesign knife.
Following the guidelines I had learned, we spent hours redesigning Five Star Seminars to fall in line with cutting edge marketing strategies. I left and my designer finished up.
Then, I got a phone call.
A very soft voice told me that she had completely destroyed our Colorado Safety Educators’ website while uploading our Five Star Seminars website.
I started laughing…what was I going to do? A simple republishing would fix it…right?
To quote my father…”as the plot sickens…”
My Internet Marketing mentor had just told us a month ago to move our websites. He highly recommended Liquid Web because real people answer the phones 24/7. He taught that when your website goes down, you need a real person, right now! (Not email tickets going back and forth that could take hours for a reply to your urgent need.)
Moving to www.liquidweb.com was on my Do List. I just wanted to fix all the websites first.
This is what happened to us. What an incredible lesson we learned!
2 pm: I left my extremely talented web designer to finish and upload changes to the server.
6pm: She was still having no luck getting changes published successfully.
7:30pm: She calls…beside herself that she had somehow completely destroyed www.coloradosafetyeducators.org while uploading www.fivestarseminars.com
7:31pm: I call our wonderful webmaster and he and our designer try to figure out what she did.
7:40pm: Our webmaster puts in a ticket with our server telling them that we have an urgent situation.
(tick, tick, tick, tick……..)
9am the next morning: He finally gets an email reply and begins to reconstruct our website. It took over 13 hours for our server to respond. This was a huge disaster!
Do you know that if your website trips out, your emails don’t work either……..so no one could communicate with me at all from my business cards.
I had given out a great many business cards at this Internet Marketing Bootcamp and these entrepreneurs and business people found no website at all. To make matter worse, what was there said that our account was suspended and to check with the billing department. Our account is completely paid up. What do we look like to the world?
Thirteen hours for a server to respond is NOT acceptable.
www.coloradosafetyeducators.org is back up and has a NEW look on the landing page. Come take a look!
I share this disaster with you so that YOU…NEVER…EVER…have to experience this kind of situation. I should have moved my websites as soon as my mentor shared his warning that the last thing we ever would want to happen was to have a website go down and couldn’t get immediate technical support from real people 24/7 to help fix the emergency.
Not only are we packing our bags and mov’in everything on over to Liquid Web, but they have a FANTASTIC affiliate referral program. We have learned the hard way the value of 24/7 live support, and talking with real, wonderfully helpful human beings, when your website goes down and completely disappears.
We are proud to now be Preferred Partners in an excellent Referral Program with Liquid Web. If you are interested in outstanding, live, technical suppport, please use our affiliate link at the bottom of each of our webpages at Colorado Safety Educators, or tell them “Barbara Scott” sent you.
Business Tip: If you are aware of the power of Affiliate Marketing, I encourage you to take a look at not only their services, but their Referral Program as well. It is an outstanding business opportunity.
Think of this post as a mini-SAFETY SEMINAR for your BUSINESS, and a highly responsive 911 web number for YOU in times of need. Great or small.
May you never…ever…watch your website disappear.
All my best to you!
Barbara Scott
Barbara, Stop Writing!
September 18, 2007
I just came back from another Internet Marketing Bootcamp event. My head is jam-packed with up-to-the-minute, cutting edge marketing strategies, and my hand is about to fall off from taking so many notes!
Apparently, I stood out so much for my silent note taking, that I caught the eye of the speaker. About once an hour for two days, I would hear the speaker’s deep voice break my concentration with, “Barbara stop writing!” or “Barbara, you don’t have to write that down!” Then, off he would go again.
Lunch was for networking. It didn’t take long for my lunch buddies to figure out that I was the “Barbara”, the speaker kept telling to stop writing. That led us into discussions on the various ways we learn.
For me, I can retain almost all of what a speaker is teaching IF I tune out everything but the speaker. I can achieve almost total focus by watching and listening to the speaker while I constantly write down everything of worth they say and have written on the large side screens.
What nails down my retention is writing down everything that I see and hear. After years of doing this at seminars, I can actually see in my mind the pages with the notes scribbled on them. I can see what I wrote and am able to find the exact information I want to look at again in my notebook.
I have created an “experience” that is hammered into my memory.
What I work to create for attendees of my safety seminars is an experience that they will remember. Sexual assault and rape prevention are very difficult subjects to discuss, let alone teach effectively. I want them to remember as many of the solutions I present to them as they possibly can.
The roughest part of the Internet marketing bootcamp was viewing the websites of our fellow attendees and watching their designs being critiqued ( polite for public shreding). Tonight, I let our webmaster know that we have a bit of work to do on our websites. I invite you to come back often and see how we adjust Colorado Safety Educators and Five Star Seminars website designs to the Internet marketing experts’ recommendations.
I will leave you with two website design tips that I learned:
Website Design Tip #1: Graphic Artists LOVE flash animation and flash intros. Internet surfers HATE them.
Website Design Tip #2: Don’t open your website with “Welcome to my…” We have about 5-10 seconds at most to catch the attention of our website’s visitor before they click off our site. They may not read any farther than your welcome greeting.
Do you think I stopped writing?
Nope. Not this obsessive, compulsive, front-row notetaker…
Happy Birthday Colorado Safety Educators!
September 9, 2007
Change. Who likes change or to be changed? One day I answered the phone, and was recruited into the world of self-defense and safety awareness. This opportunity opened my eyes and heart to a work that I cannot ever leave.
Two years ago another life-changing phone call came from a group of Colorado entrepreneurs. They challenged me to create a platform which would offer superior public awareness campaigns on behavioral safety, personal security, as well as other topics. They also said that I could be the Boss…it was the dream offer of a life-time!
As Founder and CEO of Five Star Seminars, Colorado Safety Educators, and National Safety Educators, the management team and I have found our perfect fit in safety niche development strategy. Because of the vision and entrepreneurial spirit of the management team, our public awareness campaigns are continuing to gain attention throughout Colorado because we teach self-defense strategies that actually work!
I personally invite you to join in our birthday celebrations. We have launched our beautiful new website and invite you all to our Open House. What is a party without gifts? We have a special present for all of you. Head on over to Colorado Safety Educators and click on the FREE Special Safety Report! Click through and Enjoy!
It is most humbling to have been a part in changing thousands of lives here in Colorado. With the continued help of an incredible management team, we will continue to bring solution-oriented safety instruction to our neighbors here in Colorado.
