jennsweb.blogspot.com

Recently I looked at my client list and realized that I now have quite a few whose sites include a blog.  Some of them update the blog on a regular basis and send out an email to all their subscribers to let them know there’s something new to read.  Others put a new post up once in a while and then there’s the ones who wrote 2 or 3 posts in a rush when their site was first launched and haven’t updated since then.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being taciturn.  Hey, in New England it’s practically a virtue, but with so much online customer/company interaction these days, having a blog and never doing anything with it is like hiding in the stockroom when a customer walks in the door.

I think a lot of it has to do with the sheer vastness of the blog-0-sphere.  There’s a dizzying array of blogging platforms, services, widgets, feeds and gadgets out there that can make any busy business owner throw up their hands and retreat back into their snail-mail newsletter shell.  So, hopefully, I can help by breaking this complex idea down into its basic components.

Why would I want to have a blog in the first place?

Because it’s fun!  It really is.  Whether it’s finding a great site that would help your customers find useful information, great photos from your company cook-out, or even the news that someone at your firm had a baby, it’s a good feeling to put it out there for everyone to see.  It’s also a way to turn a problem into a positive thing.  When I’ve had to spend an entire afternoon searching for a solution to an issue on a client’s site, putting a post up that shows how I solved the problem not only helps me to have it “on-file” for the next time the issue comes up, it’s good karma to provide an answer where none existed before!

Some other great reasons to have a blog for your business are:

1: It’s good for the environment.  Remember the mailed-out newsletter?  I still get one from AAA every quarter and I’m usually so busy, it goes right into the recycling bin.  Instead of all that formatting and list merging, envelope-licking and stamp buying, a blog post, set to be emailed via RSS to a client who has opted for email updates, has a much better chance of actually being read and doesn’t use any paper!

2. It’s free advertising.  Sure, you could spend hundreds of dollars on print ads, even more on an Adwords campaign, but perhaps the most effective way to gain new business is to provide an online resource for customers to find out more about your business.  People are always happy (and grateful!) to receive free information.  Informed and happy is how you want people to feel when they come to you for business.

How do I get a blog?

There are many blogging “platforms” out there, but the 2 I am most familiar with are WordPress (which runs this site) and Blogger.  WordPress offers 2 options.  If you don’t want to deal with signing up for your own self-hosted (published under your own site name on a hosting company’s server) blog, then you can go to WordPress.com and get a blog going there.

Your WordPress Blog "dashboard"

If you have your own site already and you just want to add the blog to it, you can either install WordPress in a subfolder of your site (and call the folder “blog”) and then just add a link to it in your navigation (example: jennmearswebdesign.com/blog), or you can set up your entire site in WordPress and assign a page to contain the blog portion of the site.

(Editor’s note: Blogger now has a Pages gadget to add static pages to your blog.)

Blogger is now a service offered by Google.  A blogger.com blog’s URL looks like this:

http://salemliving.blogspot.com

If you have a Google account, just sign in and go to Settings, then Google Account Settings.  Blogger is listed there along with other great (free!) tools to enhance your blog.

Your Blogger Dashboard

By the way, getting a Google account is a very useful overall step to take a business owner.  It allows you to create a Google Maps listing for your business and get easy-to-access online email as well as being a foundation for many cool blogging tools such as Feedburner.

Feedburner lets you provide a way for readers to follow your blog.

What do I write about and how often?

For a straight-up business blog, it’s best to focus your writing on information related to your business.  For example, I have a client that’s a lawyer and their blog consists of posts about various court case rulings that affect their area of practice.  If you are in the medical field, it may be a good idea to write about medical studies and other news related to your particular area of medicine.  A blog is your opportunity to give your clients useful information that is tailored just to them.  You know your clients and you know when things need to be put into layman’s terms and phrased in ways that they will understand.

Of course not every entry needs to be cut and dry information about your field.  Posts can be about things that are happening in your life like how much fun you are having coaching your daughter’s softball team, or a great new restaurant you ate at the other night.  Having a month-long special in your store?  Put up a post on your blog and then publish updates throughout the month about how sales are going.  I publish a new post when I launch a new website and it lets people know what kinds of clients I have and how I approach different web design situations.

How often should you write on your blog?  This is a pretty open-ended question.  The best answer is to sit down, think about your schedule throughout the week, and try to find 15-30 minutes somewhere that you can use for updating your blog.  Blogs that are updated on a steady basis are the ones that quickly develop loyal followers.  It’s not quantity, it’s quality.  A single well-written post with cool pictures and links once a week is 10 times better than a gaggle of half-baked, info-light random blurbs.

Good tip: If you are worried that you will end up staring at a blank editing window, come “blog-time”, take some time to write down at 10 different ideas for posts and save them for a rainy day.  I keep a notebook throughout the day when I’m working and it really helps when I have writer’s block to flip through and find the different ideas scattered throughout the pages.

How can I get people to read my blog?

Tell people that it’s there! If you already have a client email list, then send out an email with the link to the blog in it. Just be sure you are comfortable with how your blog looks first and you’ve got at least 2 or 3 (proofread!) posts on the home page already.

Be sure to include a way for people to subscribe to your blog via email. (By default, all blogs offer a way to “check in” for updates via an RSS feed but unless your audience is particularly tech-savvy, they won’t likely choose to do so. Also, most people check their email at least once a day. Your blog’s feed service will check your blog periodically and send out an email to a subscriber if you have posted new stuff.

Also, if you are on any social network that lets you post a profile, add your blog’s URL to your profile. Provide a “feed” of your blog on your Facebook profile or page and people can visit your profile and get updated on your blog in one visit.

Basically, the easier you make it for people to read and follow your blog, the more your blog will be read.

Best Blogging Practices

Be succinct

Title your posts wisely.  Web crawlers look for keywords primarily in page titles which, for a blog post is the title of the post.

Pictures keep people reading.  Just make sure you are using them legally.

Keep your content organized and easy to search through.  Using tags and categories (basically assigning relevant keywords to a post) will make it easier for readers to browse your blog (and keep browsing!)

Open a dialogue with your readers.  Was this post helpful for you?  Not anything you didn’t know already?  Do you have more questions?  Send me some feedback below!

Step 1: Find your Flickr upload email address.

This can be done by signing into your Flickr account. Then, click on You in the top left toolbar and then scroll down to Your Account. Once you’ve clicked on that, you will see a tab on the next page for Email. Click that and then on the next page you will see next to Your Flickr upload email, the address for sending photos that will appear in your Photostream.

Finding your upload email address

Step 2: Find your Facebook mobile uploads email address.

Sign into Facebook and go to your profile by clicking on your name in the top right corner. Then, go to the Your Photos tab, select an album and then click on Edit Album, then, Add More. Then, you will see an option below, “Got a camera phone?”. Click on “Upload photos straight from your phone.”, and you will be shown your upload email address in the top half of the next page.

Finding your Facebook uploads address

Step 3: Add the two email addresses to your phone.

This can be done by adding 2 new contacts, calling them Flickr and Facebook and then adding their respective email addresses.

Step 4: Take a picture!

Once you have a photo you want to send to both Flickr and Facebook, or, either one, simply select the email option in your camera phone and begin to type the email address. Once it appears as a suggestion, select it and then add the other as a CC if you wish.

Et voilà!

A camera phone photo uploaded to Facebook

Uploaded photo on your Flickr photostream page

5 Reasons to have a blog for your business

1. It’s environmentally friendly. Unless you are running a blog about your helicopter hunting/timber logging business venture. But not only is it green for the environment, it’s green for you. It takes up much less of your company’s business day since you no longer need to drive to cold calls, print out newsletters and manage mail merges.

2. It’s extremely cost-effective. Even if you feel the need to (ahem) hire a professional designer to “tweak your template” (more on that later), you should still save a ton of dough by not needing to do as much print advertising.

3. You will have an “auxiliary engine” to drive traffic to your company’s site. Put a link back to your company’s site. Use your blog profile tool to find local sites and bloggers and ask them if they are willing to trade links.

4. It can generate customer feedback and communication. Run a contest for your readers. Ask people for their opinion on your review of a local restaurant. Let people know you welcome comments by making that link more visible.

5. It’s fun! It’s a low stress way to promote your business without feeling like you are out there on a soapbox. Write what you enjoy writing about and they will come.

4 Do’s and Don’ts

Don’t be too negative too much. If you had a tough time with a client, or your favorite team/american idol contestant/politician lost, write about what you learned from it and respect others’ privacy and/or opinions.

Try to find a rhythm and stay with it. One interesting post a week is better than 7 entries that vary on “My Starbucks-Fueled Mini-Rant”, but keep your content as fresh as possible without sacrificing quality for quantity.

Be useful, or funny, or ahead of the crowd or any combination. Being creative doesn’t hurt either. Think about what kinds of questions your clients have had lately and how you can answer them.

Don’t blitz your readers with “bells and whistles”. We’ve all been to that site where so many “awesome”(bandwidth-hogging) features needed to load that we didn’t go past the home page.

3 Blogging Terms to Know

RSS: Almost synonymous with the term “Feed”, RSS stands for (in my opinion) Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way for your readers to keep up with your blog and make sure that they know when you have something new on the site. Of course, it’s up to your readers to decide to follow your blog, but putting a widget in your template (see below) suggesting that your readers to subscribe really helps things along.

Template: This is the term blogging services use for your blog’s layout and overall design. If you really want a distinctive look for your blog, such as colors based on your logo and custom backgrounds, etc, you should the editing options for your template before you go with it.

Widgets/Badges: Basically, those “bells and whistles” I was warning you about earlier. Like a good spice, use them only if necessary and they will work for you, not against you. Some examples of widgets are “Archives” that list your posts in chronological order, and Google’s Adsense which will place text ads on your blog by “sensing” the site’s content. (Which still doesn’t explain the Maalox ad that kept appearing on Jennsweb a few years ago.) Badges are items such as Flickr, which can display your Flickr images in a little window, and Twitter, which can display your most recent updates on your Twitter account.

2 FAQ’s

What should I blog about?
Almost anything. A post can be a photo, a story, an interesting link or all three combined. Don’t cast your net too wide. Think about the blog’s description (that little phrase underneath a blog’s title) and see if your entry would be something that someone finding your blog would find interesting as well.

How much time should I devote to this?
If you run a business, then you know how the word “busy” got in there. The best approach is the one that fits around your schedule. Blog on your coffee break if you want. As long as you get in the habit, don’t obsess over how much time you spend on it because…

#1 Rule: Have fun with it!
Remember, it’s not the annual report to the stockholders. Because who gets excited about reading those?

Step 1: Take a survey of sites you find useful. These days, with everyone and their dog on seemingly every social networking site known to mankind, it’s a good idea to come up with some simple coping mechanisms to combat the information overload that can result from joining YASNS. Take a few sites that you visit frequently and gather a list of the social networking tools they employ. Basically, the whole broad topic of Web 2.0 sevices can be broken down into three basic categories:

Bookmarking Tools: Those little badges for services like Digg, Reddit and Del.icio.us make it easy for your readers to save a link to your content and then share their links on their profiles.

RSS Tools: These buttons allow a reader to add a feed from your site to a feed-reader service. While most blogs and feed-enabled sites already offer this via that little orange button you see in your browser’s address bar, there are plenty of services out there such as Netvibes and Google that make it easy to track your favorite blogs via a personalized feeds display. Feedburner, recently acquired by Google, is a good tool for maintaining your feed(s) and the service gives you a feed url to use as well as some button generating tools.

Social Networking Tools: Join a site like Facebook or Twitter and you can get the code to display a badge on your site that links to your profile. Other services such as Google’s Friend Connect and MyBlogLog allow blog owners to build an online network with other bloggers.

Step 2: Once you have a sense of the types of services you want to offer and info you want to display, create a way to keep track of everything. When I sign up for a site or service, I make sure I keep a record on paper of the username, password, screen name and url of my profile page if necessary. And, since a lot of these services like t send you a confirmation/activation email, I have a folder in my webmail just for membership-related emails. (I draw the line at subfolders though. There’s only so much OCD I can take.)

Step 3: Now that you have a way to keep track of your various memberships, go create them! Here’s a list of popular services, separated by category of service:

Bookmarking Tools:
Del.icio.us
Digg
Stumble
Reddit
Slashdot

RSS Tools:
Feedburner (if you only join one rss service, make it this one!)
Google
Newsgator
BlogRovr
MyBlogLog
My Yahoo
Netvibes
Amazon Kindle
Viigo
Bloglines
Windows Live
Wikio
Blog Networks

Social Networks:
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
Twitter
Flickr
YouTube

Step 4: Now that you’ve joined everything, you’ve probably noticed that there’s a lot of interconnectivity out there between services. You can post your Twitter Tweets to your Facebook Wall, your Flickr Feed to your Myspace page and put your LinkedIn badge all over creation. Don’t stress that yet. For now, you want to make sure your loyal readers know how to make the most of your site. It’s time to add some buttons to your site. Sign into your Feedburner account and burn a feed for your website.

Step 5: Once you’ve burned your Feedburner feed for your site, go to their “Publicize” page. Now you can do some “one stop shopping” for some feed chicklets! Click on the “Chicklets” tab and then simply choose the feed aggregator services you want from their 24 item menu. You can also head over to Top Rank’s blog and get even more chicklets. Tip: save the code generated by these services in a plain text file for easy access. You can then copy and paste the code to display these badges wherever you’d like on your site. For example, if you are using a WordPress site with widgetized sidebars, then you would go to your Widgets page on your dashboard, select the sidebar you want and then add a text widget. Then, simply paste in the code and save your changes.

Step 6: Now that you’ve added a way for your readers to get updates about your blog, you should add ways for them to bookmark and share your content. Addtoany.com is a great service that lets you grab a selection of bookmarking icons to add to the post template of your blog. Addthis is another site that lets you get one button that contains all the code for your bookmarking services.

Step 7: Once you’ve placed some feed chicklets and bookmarking buttons on your blog, you can get to work on your badges. Log into your account at Facebook. Then, underneath the left sidebar of your Wall, you should see a link that says: “Create a profile badge”. Simple enough. Twitter has a couple of ways to make your badge. If you go to your Twitter page, on the bottom there’s a link that says “Apps”. Go there if you want to have a badge on oyour site that displays all your latest “tweets”. If you want a button that says something like “Follow me on Twitter” then here’s a site that has an easy to use interface for creating your personal Twitter button. Extra Credit Project: since I can be a bit of what’s politely termed, “A Control Freak”, I created my own Twitter button, uploaded it to my images file and then linked to it in the sidebar with a surrounding hypertext link to a Twitter profile.

Step 8: If you want your readers to join a network of other bloggers and blog readers, then you can also insert a service for that. I’ve used MyBlogLog which offers an free trial period and then charges $25 for a “Professional Account” and they are pretty cagey about what the benefits are. Therefore, I recommend Google’s Friend Connect, a free service which is more user (and wallet) friendly. All you need is a Google account.
#Jenn Tip: I was able to fully customize the code in the Friend Connect badge to fit into a narrow sidebar and also switched out the hexcodes for ones that specifically matched a client’s logo colors.

-maybe the Pope’s right! ;^)

1. Create your note on your Facebook profile. Then, in another window on your browser, find the page you want to link to. Select that page’s url and copy it.

2. Go back to your note and find the text you want to transform into a link. Place your cursor in front of the first letter and type in these characters:

3. Now, after the first set of quote marks, paste in the url you just copied and then put another set of quotation marks followed by a bracket after it like so:

4. Next, go to the last character in the string of text you want to link to and after it type:

NOTE:  I have had a couple of readers tell me that this didn’t work for them.  If you try it and it doesn’t work as a link, please leave a comment below.  Facebook has an annoying way of changing things around so it never hurts to test again once in a while.

Step 1: In your Webmail account, go to your Settings folder and select Compose. Then,create your webmail signature with interactive links in the compose window and save the changes.

Tip: Make those links as user-friendly as possible. Luckily my Doteasy webmail GUI lets me include tooltips in a link. That way people will have some idea of what they are going to see when they click the link.
Step 2: Go to your webmail mailbox and send a message to your Gmail account with that new signature.
Step 3: Go to your Gmail account and open up the message you just sent and give it a test drive.
Step 4: Now you can keep that message handy and copy and paste your signature from there when you want to include it in a Gmail message. When you want to include that signature, simply view that message with your signature, highlight the signature and then copy and paste it into the new message.
Please Note: This only works if you launch Gmail in its own window. (top left corner of inbox window;”Launch Full Gmail”)
Easy!

Originally I wanted to do a Glossary, but A: That takes a lot of time, time I could spending on Facebook! B: It’s a fairly fastmoving service, so I’d run the risk of dating myself (and I don’t mean in a fun way) and C: Why tread where others have obviously tread before?

So…here are some links to fairly good guides to Facebook. Enjoy, and let me know if you’ve found some good guides you’d like to share!

CNET: Newbie’s Guide to Facebook

Techsoup’s Beginner’s Guide (with bonus screenshots!)

AllFacebook’s Guide to Page Tabs: Find out what Boxes and Notes are all about

Web Worker Daily’s 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally: Good no-fluff, no hype tips for using Facebook to its fullest.

And, for fun, check out Sugarrae’s Unofficial Guide

We’re all familiar with the SEO mantra “ranking is determined in part by the number of pages that link back to your site.” While that is a big slice of the magic pie of good search results rankings, it is a concept that leaves many people wondering how all those wonderful links are created. Plenty of companies are poised to pounce on your money with their promise of acquiring links by the bushel for you, but do you really need to spend any money at all?

Heck, no! Here are five strategies that can be used to seed the web with quality links back to your site. (But no spamming!)

1) Be A Joiner:
A nice thing about social networking is that many sites allow you to join for free and you can instantly start looking for other people you may know on a particular network. When you build your profile page on a service such as Twitter, Facebook or Orkut, you can list your website(s) as a live link.

2) Weave Your Web:
There are plenty of blogging services out there and most of them give you the option of putting links to other sites in a sidebar. So if you have a couple of blogs out there and maybe a site for your business, make sure each of your sites includes links back to the others.

3) Holler Back:
Chances are there are lots of sites/blogs out there related to your business. Find some good, high-traffic ones. Then check out 1) If they have comments enabled and 2) If the comment form allows you list your web site’s url. Then, follow your favorites when you find their content useful, post a comment and include your url.
A few tips:
Do write a comment that is worth reading. While “Great post! Thanks!” is nice, it’s not really saying much is it? Why did you like it? How do you plan to make use of what you learned?
Don’t treat it like a Super Bowl commercial. Most bloggers have approval over which comments get posted and if I smell a “comment commercial” I tend to go for that spam button.
Do check the freshness date on the content you are commenting on. Posts more than a year old are not as likely to be read as something posted up to 3 months ago.

Another method for connecting with other sites is to utilize trackbacks and pingbacks. While this method does not necessarily put a link back to your site on another web page, it will let another blog know when you link back to it. Diligent bloggers like to know who is linking to them and it will help others to know you are out there. I included these because sometimes blogs do not allow for comments, only tracks and pings and it’s good to know what they’re about. Sometimes pings can be utilized via a service like Technorati to let it know when you have added new content.

4) Be A Critic:
Amazon has some great benefits to joining. You can sign up as an Associate and sell products through your web site and create a user profile that can include your website’s url. When you write a review of an Amazon product, your name is linked to your profile. So, if you take care to write helpful reviews for popular items, you can help generate that much more traffic to your site.

5) Be Your Own Press Agent:
If you took the advice of tip #1, then you have a ready-made media outlet already. Whenever you write new content for your site, update Twitter and Facebook and any other sites to reflect that. (Twitter has a function where you can incorporate your tweets into your Facebook wall. Useful in the way of saving time, but try not to create too much “clutter”) For example: “Jenn has just written a post about SEO on jennmearswebdesign.com”. Keep it short and simple.

There’s also an array of aggregate services out there where you can volunteer links to your content. Here’s a few:
Del.icio.us: Bookmark a link to your content on your page.
Stumble upon: Go to your page and click Stumble icon if you have it on your toolbar and/or embedded on your page.
Digg: Submit your new content’s url in the appropriate category.
Reddit: Submit your link.

Jenn Tip: Of course, you join all these services and before you know it, you’re dealing with an onslaught of usernames, passwords and invite emails. How do you keep it all straight?
1) Ensure your browser has the ability to remember signin info (on a secure, personal computer) and take advantage so you won’t have to keep looking up your password.
2) I actually use a similar password for each site. You may want to encrypt a little more than this, but it helps when I use a different computer.
3) Most services you sign up for send you a confirmation email. Create a “memberships” folder in your online inbox and store it there.
4) Maintain a text file that lists your accounts in alphabetical order and keep the usernames and passwords updated.
5) Organize how you are going to find all these sites. I use the bookmarks tool on my browser. You could also use another bookmarking service such as Del.icio.us and a common tag such as “Daily” or “Social”.

Above all, remember that quality link building is an ongoing, proactive process. Make the time to develop your network. Just create a simple goal like: “I am going to create at least 3 incoming links to my site every day.” and go from there. Good luck!