SCORE GREATER PHOENIX
4 Easy Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Website
Your website is often how you make your first impression to potential clients or customers. It’s important to ask yourself whether a visitor will want to stay and browse or whether they’ll quickly bounce away to a competitor. So what matters most and how can you avoid costly mistakes? While not everyone agrees, there are commonalities to consider.
WEB CONTENT
MOMPRENEURS
3 Ways to Increase Traffic to your Website
A website without traffic is like a knickknack on the shelf — pretty to look at, but otherwise nonfunctional except for collecting dust bunnies. Now, imagine that same knickknack on a shelf with hundreds, thousands, even millions of other curiosities, each vying for attention. Which ones will get noticed, and which ones will be virtually invisible?
Please note that RuthAnn Hogue's most prolific examples of recent writing took place between August 2017 and August 2024 as a ghostwriter for LAVIDGE. The links here are not all still active, but the content can be provided upon request. RuthAnn is in the process of uploading PDFs to replace content where it has been removed or moved. In the meantime, they are available through individual requests to valid potential clients, employers and recruiters.
GoDaddy Garage
True Grit has a scent--and it smells a lot like Outlaw Soaps
A romantic getaway, a little farm store and a love of everything goats inspired one California couple to create their own line of handmade soap — so stinking good its branding had to be criminal. In a story of small business growth fueled by true grit, Outlaw Soaps has expanded its presence from an online store to a brick-and-mortar location in less than three years.
Does your website need an SSL certificate?
You’ve registered the perfect domain name for your website. Your product list is coming together and your website looks great. Then, bam. A new contact from the local chamber of commerce asks you over breakfast finger foods if your small business website will be secured with an SSL certificate.
Etherial’s rock ‘n’ roll jewelry strikes a chord in .eu and beyond
Marcus Platrides was an economics lecturer studying for a master’s degree in London and trading precious metals on the side. Then his traditional career path took a decidedly otherworldly turn. Now, Marcus and his small team of craftsmen forge those precious metals by hand into edgy, rock ’n’ roll inspired jewelry under the brand name Etherial.
BLOGUETTES
WordPress Security: 7 Tips You Should Apply Right Now
WordPress makes publishing blog posts easy, but is it safe to use? Absolutely — as long as you make WordPress security a priority. WordPress is open-source software, meaning there is no secret code. Anyone with a little programming knowledge can easily hack into a basic WordPress site if its owner has not taken proper precautions.
AMERICA'S SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER
3 Tips to Collect Payments Online -- Get Paid Like a Pro
You know you need a website, but you’re not sure whether you want to take the next step to make it capable of accepting payments online. After all, potential customers can fill out your contact form. Then you can call them back or send an email with a link or any other number of options other than closing the sale by collecting immediately.
Get online, get found and grow your business with social media
Social media has long since taken the leap from an ever-growing collection of forums and apps to enhance your social life to the realm of valuable business tool. If you’re still waiting to join in, here are some reasons why you should.
eCommerce consumers don't buy products--they buy what's in it for them
It’s a fact — to many consumers, if you aren’t online you don’t exist. So you built an online store and trusted sales would follow. Why, then, aren’t your amazing products flying off your virtual shelves?
Five tips for choosing a dependable Website partner
Let's face it. Business relationships sometimes end unexpectedly. And when that relationship is with your website partner, you might be left with an unfinished, unattended or hijacked site.
Plugged In: The Arizona Republic
On Presidents Day, remember all who provided lifestyle
My parents, Lenny and Naomi Hesterman of west Phoenix, raised my siblings and me to always search for and honor the true meaning of holidays. From keeping the birth of Christ in Christmas to remembering the bloodstained cloth that wrapped the freezing feet of the first American revolutionaries, no holiday was simply a vacation from school or work.
Summers of long ago still not forgotten
Running barefoot through sprinklers dousing lawns dotted with dandelions and tiny white flowers is the stuff of my earliest summer memories, along, of course, with healthy helpings of ice-cold homemade Popsicles and slices of juicy watermelon.
Holiday memories make season bright
Holidays, as emotionally charged and wearisome as they sometimes can be, more often than not also hold memories we each hold dear.
News Writing:
Defining Moments
Growing Pains: An investigative series
Teleservices: It’s the fastest-growing industry in Tucson and among those exploding in North America and around the world.
Already between 6 million and 7 million agents work in some 48,000 call centers based in the United States handling inbound calls for businesses and government agencies.
With 16,000 agents in Tucson, a number predicted to double by the year 2003, questions swirl regarding an industry sometimes called the “sweatshops of the ’90s.”
The Journey Home: Diary of a terminal cancer patient
Thirteen front-page stories in the Daily News-Sun provided the starting point for the book "Goodbye, Walter." It's a story about living as much as it is a chronicle of one brave man's march toward death. Author RuthAnn Hogue turns her experiences as a reporter into a powerful story of friendship and self-discovery. In taking us along on this intimate and personal journey, she reminds us-and herself-of the great gifts of love and of faith and of how the two are eternally entwined. Somehow, by celebrating life, she makes facing death a little less frightening for us all.
His name won’t keep Joe Garagiola Jr. on deck
He's vice president and general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks with a six-figure salary and instant name recognition. But Joe Garagiola Jr. still comes across as a weak-armed, no-hit journeyman ballplayer.
"If you are thinking you are somebody, you're probably not," the 45-year-old father of four said. "You just better shut up and do your job every day. I think, no matter what your job is, you ought to show up every day ready to go to work. At the end of the day, you want to be able to look back and think you accomplished something."
Counselor helps teen plot a course for college, career
Veronica Reyna knows that obtaining a college education is the surest way to achieve success in the 21st century.
That's why she's set a goal to graduate from Pueblo High School this spring and to attend the University of Arizona next fall.
She's still a bit fuzzy about the details, though, so a Pueblo High School guidance counselor, Armando Ronquillo, agreed to meet with Veronica and her mother, Lori Reyna. Her Big Sister from the ``I Can Be What I Have Seen'' career mentoring program sat in on the session, too.
Ronquillo began by asking Veronica where she plans to be this time next year.
(From an advocacy series of stories in which Business Reporter RuthAnn Hogue participates in The Boys and Girls Clubs of Tucson's "I can be what I have seen" mentoring program matching high school seniors with professionals who can guide them through the process of choosing a career and getting into the proper school, providing advice and more. The school district has kept the above link for many years past publication.)
SECTON EDITOR
RuthAnn Hogue was named Community Journalist of the Year by the Arizona Press Club in 1998 for her body of work overseeing Surprise Today and editing the Northwest Valley/State section of the Daily News-Sun. Part of her award-winning entry went on to become the award-winning book “Goodbye, Walter: The inspiring story of a terminal cancer patient” (Mapletree, 2005). A second edition updated the subtitle (Whiptail, 2014).
Neighbors, a collection of daily micro-local news pages, RuthAnn Hogue developed and edited regularly for the Arizona Daily Star from January 2000 to March 2001. Neighbors published 11 times each week in eight zoned editions and were replated twice per week in two markets. She had previously spent the bulk of her time at The Phoenix Gazette and The Arizona Republic between 1992 and 1996 gathering and writing neighborhood news. She went on to work at several community newspapers including the Daily News-Sun, giving her much insight on how to put together and maintain such a publication with minimal staff, a monthly budget and a stable of freelance contributors.
Arizona Daily Star Neighbors sections edited Include:
North Side
East Side
South Side
Green Valley
Downtown
Northwest
Midtown
Foothills
COVERING Business
Doing business in Canada can be tricky for Arizona companies, but help is available
Doing business across international borders always comes with challenges, regardless of how close those borders are to home.
It's not surprising, then, that Canadians doing business in Arizona and Arizona-based businesses operating in Canada sometimes need support. From private entities to government agencies, that help appears to have blossomed in recent years.
Crossing over: Couple building Mexican practice for Valley law firm
Mentioning the Arizona border town of Nogales probably doesn't conjure up images of complicated, multibillion-dollar business transactions.
Maybe it should. Just ask Hector and Kim Arana, attorneys who are building a successful law office in what many think of as just another small, dusty town at the gateway to Mexico.