On Sunday my daughter and I had the pleasure of attending a Yoga and Art Workshop with Jill Caporlingua. You can see my post about a workshop Jill conducted last year. You sign up your child for the workshops with Jill, but if you are one of the parents who stay (and not all parents do), you can see the adults are having a wonderful time as well.

Jill showed the group a landscape by Vincent Van Gogh as an inspiration for the children to create their own landscapes. My daughter created a cityscape, and I plan to show it as my next “What Do You See” post. Then she said “and parents feel free to do your own.” I happily took a piece of paper and created the above scene. My daughter wanted to help out, and she added her own embellishments to the painting. I wonder if you can figure out what parts she contributed?

If any of you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I have been playing with Drupal. Drupal is a content management system (CMS). How is it different than WordPress (this blog uses WordPress), which is also a CMS? That is one of the questions that I hope to be able to answer by conducting my “experiment.” The idea is to learn out loud. When learning a new technical area, I find it good to make mistakes and get error messages. Why? Because then you learn more by needing to fix them.

If you usually come to this blog to look at photos, art and recipes, you might want to skip the next paragraph. Or hang in there and try to learn something technical?

I originally installed Drupal using the control panel that comes with my web hosting. But then I was informed that using the CVS (Concurrent Versions System) and the command line via shell access were better ways to keep a Drupal installation current. My first attempt resulted in multiple errors. It turns out I hadn’t deleted all the old files (I had left the settings.php files because I was warned about losing those). What I really needed to do was make a copy of settings.php (which I did), delete ALL the previous drupal files as well as drop the database tables (but not the database itself). Finally, it worked. If you care to visit, it’s current address is http://zot.leoraw.com.

My current plan is to use the site eventually to write about how a small to medium-sized business or organization can plan, update and optimize a website. There are so many factors involved, but I will name a few:

• Content: What would any site be worth without great content?
• A Good Domain Name: I named the directory zot because it was at the end of the alphabet, not because I thought it was a good name. I’ll need help coming up with a good domain name.
• Navigation: Users need to get around a site easily.
• Design: Working toward a good design for a site is important. If the design pulls a user in, the user will be more likely to hang around and read the content.
• Layout: Two columns? Three columns? Fluid or Static (this blog is static; the current Drupal theme is fluid).
• Search Engine Optimization: If Google can’t find your site, where are you?
• Updating the Site: Who will update the site? If the person can’t spell or has no sense of design, even if the site uses a CMS, you may have disappointing results.

Initially, however, (and initially could last several months) I will be using the site to learn Drupal. Anyone care to hang around and learn with me? Questions are welcome.

And for those who like art posts, I have another art post coming soon. A landscape.

I call these “baby” daffodils because they are only a few inches tall. These little daffodils bloomed this past week in front of my house. My large daffodils in the back look like they might bloom any day now. I have seen some daffodils in bloom elsewhere in Highland Park.

Because I like yellow and purple together, here are some little crocuses that are situated in the far corner of my backyard.

For more flowers, visit Today’s Flowers:

Jack hosts this week’s Haveil Havalim, the weekly blog carnival of the Jewish Blogosphere. He compares Haveil Havalim to the famous scene from Night at the Opera, when Harpo, Chico, Groucho and too many others crowd into an ocean liner cabin.

And I updated my Pics of the Month page. The page features some of my favorite paintings, photos or Flash creations. Featured in this post is a watercolor I did in 2007. Any ideas why I chose it for this post?

On my blog

Today’s Flowers: Early Spring

Ruby Tuesday Firetruck
Visit the Rutgers Agricultural Museum in New Brunswick via this post.

East Meets West?
In Which Graham Gudgin (originally of Britain, now of Edison) hosts Hannah (originally of U.S., now of Israel)

Recipes for Pesach

Nature Notes: Buds

Twitter:

• Twitter for Chiropractors and Other Health Professionals
  Are you a health professional? Learn how to use Twitter to help your business grow.
• Twitter Twitter Twitter
  Links for newbies, for attracting more followers, for designing your background

Creating a Calendar Icon in Photoshop

What Do You See?
Examine a child’s drawing. Fun participatory game!

Elsewhere in the Blogosphere

• Can Diet Really Improve the Symptoms of Autism?
• A Glimpse Inside the World of Vietnam’s Jewish GI’s
• Ancient Talmudic Ceremony Celebrated in New York City in 1897
• Are Children Likely to Be Less Healthy Than Their Parents?
• Have you ever heard of or seen a flower called Red cudweed?

In honor of Diana Hakakian, Chiropractor

As a follow-up to my post on Twitter for Local Business, here are some ideas on how a chiropractor can use Twitter to connect with potential new clients.

Step One: Sign up and pick a username. It can just be your first or last name with an initial, or you can choose an alias like this one: DrMommy. As you are working at present yourself as a health professional, you will want to add a photograph of yourself, to show you are a real person. You can poke around on Twitter to see what others are using to get some ideas. You can change the user pic easily later, if you like.

Step Two: Add a few sentences to your bio on Twitter. This is important. Why should people follow you back? You need to provide them some kind of idea of who you are and of your interests. If you have a professional blog, website, page on LinkedIn or Facebook, add the URL.

Step Three: Write your first tweet. Tweets must be 140 characters or less. An example:

“I am so glad I have been able to help my new client with her back pain after her accident.”

You can even phrase it as a question:

How can find others on Twitter who might need chiropractic services?”

Or:

“I’m a newbie on Twitter, but I’m not new to health services. I know a lot about” (fill in with x y and z).

Step Four: Write a tweet with a link to an article. It can be any article, but why not choose one that will show your knowledge of your health profession? To write a tweet with a link to an article, first put in the title of the article. That will help get others attention. Then paste in the URL. If your tweet is now more than 140 characters, and your Twitter application does not automatically shorten it, you can use a URL-shortening service to get a shorter URL.

Step Five: Find others to follow. If you already have a few friends on Twitter, follow them (and ask them to follow you back). That way when you click on new followers, you have at least a few people following you already.

Here are some chiropractors that tweet:

• DrMommy
• chiromama
• HandsonHealth
• drhenderson
• chiroqueen
• dr_jennifer
• WellnessDocAz
• chiromoos
• ClinSigPro
• thespecific
• drrobs
• DrDavayneDC
• matthewloop (social media tips)
• digitalchiro (social media training for chiropractors)

Updated: Digital Chiropractor (digitalchiro) trains chiropractors on how to use social media as a marketing tool for their practices.

For learning more about Twitter, I highly recommend following clydeboom.

Step Six: Follow people in your area. Chiropractors need to have clients that are in their own geographical area. Here are some tools to help you find local people:

• Nearby Tweets
• TwitterLocal
• Twellow: Twitter Directory

You can also look in http://wefollow.com/ for Twitter users in your area. I am listed in the New Jersey section (search for newjersey).

Step Seven: Talk to the people you have followed. You can reply (@username) to their tweets. Or you can RT (re-Tweet) what someone said. Retweeting is an excellent way to show you enjoyed what the person had to say, and you want to pass the valuable information or inspirational thought unto others. I often reTweet good articles.

Step Eight: Learn how to search. Twitter is a great tool for research on anything current. You can try searching for ‘health’ or ‘back pain’ or ‘chiropractic’ or any other keyword. Some search tools:

• http://search.twitter.com/
• http://twitterfall.com/
• Twitter application TweetDeck has search tools built-in.

Question: Do you need to have a blog to go on Twitter?
Answer: No. However, the more web presence you have, the more professional you will appear to potential clients. LinkedIn, Facebook and blogs on WordPress.com or on Blogger are all free ways one can market oneself. A professional website or a professional blog can be aides in marketing your services to these potential clients.

Want to learn more?

• Jennifer Fong explains What is Social Media?.
• If you live in New Jersey, attend a talk by Eva Abreu about Social Media. She will be at the Highland Park Public Library on April 30 speaking about Social Media Marketing. I will be there, too!
• More links for learning in my recent post: Twitter Twitter Twitter

If anyone has more ideas about how a health professional can use Twitter to reach potential clients and market their business, please feel free to leave a comment. Questions are also most welcome.