I’ve been reading a bit about how to create a successful blog. Know your audience. Be concise. Be accurate. Be funny. This seems easy but will probably challenge me for a bit while I get used to blogging. So stick around while I get it figured out, ok?

I think my target audience is business leaders at small to mid-sized companies. Not necessarily geography-specific, but there may be some occasional topics that aren’t all that relevant to out of state readers. While some of the topics may be more technical in nature, I’ll try to write in a manner that seeks to educate non-techies rather than sharing specialized information with my fellow geeks.

I’ve got many potential topics already lined up and will try to write at least several times a week. Drop me a line to let me know how I’m doing, if you’ve ideas for topics you’d like covered, or just want to say hi.

Woohoo! The iPhone is now $200 cheaper! Too bad AT&T doesn’t offer service in Montana. While the rest of the country was basking in the glow of their WiFi capable phones with beautiful UI’s, we got zilch. And with Apple’s 5 year exclusive deal with AT&T, I don’t suppose we’ll be getting it anytime soon.

I started consulting in the summer of 2006. I built a website and put all kinds of elaborate descriptions of what I do on it. Never said the word “I”…always “we”. Have to sound big, right? Well, I finally realized that I’m not interested in getting big and hiring lots of people into the firm. I’d rather stay small and use contractors when necessary. So my new site focuses on what I do, what I’m interested in, and how I think I can help companies in my area. This blog is a big part of that.

The site’s built using WordPress. A free content management system that is virtually plug and play. I’d never setup a WordPress site before, so I figured this should be a good experiment that puts me in my clients’ shoes.

I use 1&1 for hosting. The install was four easy steps: Create the MySQL database, Download the WordPress package, Customize the wp-config file with the database details, and upload the site to 1&1. Well, five steps really. The first was a quick Google search to find this extremely helpful post on Antbag.com.

I decided I liked the 3 column layout which WordPress didn’t seem to do out of the box. So I found a K2 modification that allowed me to do it.

Signed up as an Amazon Associate so I could get commissions from everyone buying books linked on my site. Ha!

The Lijit search widget is both enticing and frustrating. It can show popular searches, but I can’t seem to override the 1.4em line spacing from their stylesheet. I don’t want that thing taking over the whole sidebar, so it’s restricted for now. And the darn Explore link doesn’t seem to ever generate anything. Maybe as the blog starts getting read…

Finally, the thing that seemed like it should be a little easier. Google Ads. I wanted to do this just to learn how it’s done. Certainly don’t expect any real revenue to be generated! But I have to manually insert the script in the Edit Theme module of WordPress. Of course, now I wish I had run across this article on the best AdSense plugins for WordPress. Maybe I’ll have to go back and check some of them out when I get some time.

So, that’s the site. A decent starting point for $0 and a few hours of work. What do you think?

It’s commonly stated these days that technology is capable of leveling the playing field between small and large businesses. Witness the growing reliability of managed services providers, the availability of low cost hosted services like Salesforce.com, the increasing capabilities of open source tools, and even the propagation of pseudo-programming tools like InfoPath.

I live in Billings, Montana, and the market here is all small business. Billings is a town of about 100k people, but there are only 50 or so companies with more than 100 employees! So when you do what I do, in a market like this, you need to stay tuned into low cost options that will allow our small businesses to compete when national players move in.

I intend to use this forum to talk about technology solutions specifically geared towards companies in the SMB market. It’s tough to nail down what SMB really means. But for the sake of argument, I’ll just say anything from 10-250 employees or up to about $20MM annual revenue.

I also have a special interest in how the Web 2.0 technologies are making their way into the enterprise. Personally, I think that topic is right in line with the SMB solutions. Smaller, more agile companies are always looking for ways to market themselves or streamline their operations. So they’re ripe candidates to adapt the “Web 2.0″ type tools.

Finally, as all of us in this field are doing, I’m learning a ton every day. I’ll share some of these things as we go along as well. I’m no super-coder, but hopefully the stuff I learn will be useful to you as well.

Oh, and I want to share information about the state of technology in Billings. And what you should know if you’re thinking of moving to this beautiful place called Montana. And, other stuff I run across that’s amusing, informative, useful or odd. And…

I’m sure this will evolve. Stay tuned and we’ll see what happens. Thanks for visiting and come back again soon!