Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all.

This is a long overdue "hello" to all. This year has been a great one, filled with lots of visits from friends, traveling and family. I am fortunate to be able to say that 2008 was great for me professionally as well, as I continued to grow my corporate blogging business.

The picture featuring my new pedicure is from this past week in Aruba. An absolutely wonderful vacation in a beautiful place. It was a great way to end the year.

I am looking forward to February when my book finally comes out. You can still get in on a good deal and pre-order Confessions of an Introvert from Amazon. As far as I know the release date is firm. I will keep you posted if I hear differently.

ORDER IT NOW... (subliminal message)

Other exciting news is the announcement of new client Metro GreenScape. An innovative landscape company in Charlotte that creates "outdoor living" spaces. If you want to check them out, go to their website today.

They made up a landscape design for my own property - which I think is a top-notch idea. They came out and looked at my yard and worked out a custom design with my requirements in mind (low maintenance, perennials, drought resistance), and put together a great look. Over the next couple months they will be installing the plants, shrubs, trees, flowers, etc. etc. I am so excited. But best of all, with the design, I know exactly what the yard will look like and have a guide book of where everything is and how to care for it. It is this kind of "above and beyond" that makes Metro GreenScape the premier landscape company in Charlotte. I will keep my own project updates posted here--but feel free to ask about it. I can't tell you how giddy I am about this design landscape project. And I invite you to come see my new outdoor living space.

Meghan Wier
Author Writer Web Consultant

Meg's Vacation Photo

ok - so here is the promised picture of me from the vacation -- So many great pics were taken thanks to my family's facination w/ technology but not a ton of me. This one sis Erin took and she did a wonderful job. Don't I look relaxed!

oh oh! Better get back to blogging

Ok, so now total strangers are starting to tell me I am not blogging enough! It used to be just my mom, but I logged on today to find comments on several of my blogs. Sorry guys - I will try to be better. As an introvert I think that sometimes we forget that there is a bigger world...

I am fresh off my vacation and If I figure out a way to post a picture or two, I will. Vacation was wonderful. Time with family, sisters, my niece. It was great.

Vacation brain is still clouding my ability to get things done, but I have been doing a bit of research on how to get my book on amazon to rank better. It seems there are a lot of SEO-ish ways to get a better ranking - and the better ranked books come up higher when searches happen and generally sell better. Which -- then in turns brings the ranking up (or in fact "down" as a lower number is better).

One way to get a better ranking is for people to write reviews about your book. And if those people have reviewed before, the ranking increase will be better, especially if their other reviews were voted "helpful". The ins and outs of that is a little nutty and probably a bit more complicated than Google in some ways.

Now, Amazon won't let anyone write a review unless they have bought something on Amazon before - or vote for helpfulness or "tag" an item either. I think this is probably to disuade people from creating reviews falsely. Which, as annoying as it is as the author, is respected.

Anyway the SEO-person in me is enjoying the challenge of learning as much as I can, and the author in me obviously wants my book to be ranked as best it can be.

So I am actively soliciting reviews as a starter, and learning as much as I can about getting those rankings up.

This week I cave company in, so I will try not to avoid my updates here, but, given my track record, I can't promise anything.... :)