Alexander & Julian Inc.

[Crosspost from Entrepreneurswithblogs.com]

Is a blog right for your business? Of course! Even if you are in a top secret industry, there is enough to cover about business that isn't part of giving out intellectual property. Running a consulting firm, I would NOT reveal any of my clients or any information that is under NDA. However, I will talk about what it is like running a consulting firm, how to deal with marketing, and resources that I have found informative during my education of running a business.

So how do I start a blog? Well for this community, you can easily register and the tools are very self explanatory. If you can't quite figure it out, ping me and I will try my best to help you. Other sites like blogger, MSN Spaces, and others are fairly simple to use, but not being part of a community makes it harder to get noticed.

How do I get marketing value out of my blog? One great resource that was just published is Robert Scoble and Shel Isreal's book, Naked Conversations. This book covers the business of blogging and uses several examples, including Microsoft, on how real companies are making the best of blogging to drive customer satisfaction and delivering information straight to your customers. I would highly suggest you add this book to your reading list. A good way to get started in marketing your company is just talk about the everyday questions of your business. If you are a cake decorator, like my wife, you could talk about upcoming events where you will be showcasing your cakes, explain the differences in cake styles, or explain what to expect when contacting a cake decorator. Each one of these topics will be sniffed by a search engine and will help you get direct marketing from search engine users finding answers. If you still can't think of anything to blog about, look at what your customers are asking you and start talking about it. Solving common questions via your weblog will help your customer get what they need without costing you time repeating yourself.

Still not convinced? All I can suggest is give it a try. It might not be for you, but at least you can get more information out about your business now and let the search engines go to work.

Jeff Julian, Principal
Alexander & Julian Inc.

Build Automation and Continuous Integration

Creating a deployable build usually requires much more than simply compiling an application. There are almost always other steps involved such as integrating and testing the latest code, running unit tests, setting version numbers, updating configuration settings, and deploying to a Test or Staging server. In this presentation, Brian will demonstrate using NAnt, MSBuild, and CruiseControl.Net to automate a build, continually integrate/test the application, and schedule daily builds.

Presented by:  Brian Muirhead

Register Here