Although there’s an iPhone app for everything short of walking your dog, sometimes there’s an easier way to something that’s a little off the beaten path. I was taking photos of some artwork that a friend of mine did with our daughter on New Year’s Eve and in the midst of sending it to my twitpic account, I changed my mind and came up with a way to post a photo to a Flickr photo stream and Facebook simultaneously. Continue Reading…
Author’s note: This is not the stuff that I do, but it’s what I should do.
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?
Web Designer Depot posted a well-written article on choosing a CMS platform that can be a good read with your afternoon coffee.
I’ve been acting like a squirrel on crack with Del.icio.us over the past 2 years. In the course of trying to grow a web design business from something done on the side, when I’ve got free time on the weekend, through the part time graphic design job with the difference made up with web clients, to taking the plunge into the full time freelance world, every time I researched a different aspect of the web, I would hit Google and bookmark every decent article I could get my hands on.
The following list is the first of (hopefully) many where I share the best of the best on various topics such as Search Engine Optimization, hosting, web technologies and this one, blogging.
Continue Reading…
