How to Blog: For Beginners

This post will help you learn how to blog. So, you finally have your own blog. Now what? You’ve been anxiously awaiting the moment, and now that you have the ability to share your thoughts with the entire world, you can’t think of anything to say. Maybe you feel intimidated by the whole concept of a world-wide publishing system at your fingertips. Maybe the user interface of your blogging software or CMS (Content Management System) is confusing and difficult to use. Maybe you’re second guessing your own ideas.

Whatever the reason, it must be overcome. Whether you plan to blog for business or just use it as an outlet for your personal ideas, to be successful, you must produce interesting content. Here are some tips and tricks to help get your blog up and running.

1. Familiarize yourself with WordPress.

One of the main reasons why you wanted a blog was so that you could make updates yourself. To do this, you must be familiar with and able to use your blogging software or Content Management System. If possible, have somebody show you how to log in and make posts, etc. First hand experience is always best. If nobody is available to assist you, you can find lots of useful information online. If that’s not working for you, you can hire someone to teach you how to use WordPress.

(Did I mention that I’m available for WP instruction and consultation?)

2. Write your post before logging in.

Don’t try to write your post from the Add New Post page in the WordPress Admin panel. Even if you’ve become familiar with WordPress, you’ll be more productive if you write your ideas down on paper or in a word processor first. This is a more comfortable writing environment for the majority of people. It will allow you to focus on the content of your blog post instead of being distracted by other elements of the WordPress interface. Most of us have too many distractions already. So, why add more?

3. Don’t copy or scrape content.

Create your own content and be original. It’s not only unethical and possibly illegal to copy or scrape content from other blogs, it can actually be detrimental to your listing on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). When the same content is found on multiple pages by a search engine, it could result in a lower search ranking for both of them. Also, if the site you copied from is more popular than yours (which is likely if you’re using their content), your site will be pushed down in the search rankings. If you find it absolutely necessary to inform your audience of some other content, write up a brief summary and why you think it’s important to your readers. Don’t forget to include a link to the original article and give credit to the original author.

If you can’t think of any ideas or topics for your own posts, have a look at How To Blog: Topic Tips.

4. Don’t worry about perfection.

Of course you want your blog post to be perfect, but don’t let that stop you from generating content. Remember, you can always edit your posts after they are published. That being said, please spell-check, proof-read, and double check everything before posting. In most many cases, the bulk of the traffic that a page generates comes shortly after it is posted.

Learn How to Blog Better

So please, take the time to nurture your blog. Consider your audience, create quality content consistently and you will see an increase in traffic. As usual, your comments and questions are always welcome. Blogging shouldn’t feel like work. Learn how to blog better and don’t forget to stay creative!

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency

5 Ways to Promote your Website

As the new year rapidly approaches, you might want to think about how to promote your website better. This is the perfect time to set goals and make plans. So, I’ve compiled five techniques that you can and should be using to increase traffic to your website. Some of them are free and some require money. Some are quick to do and some require an ongoing process.

1. Include Your URL on all printed material.

Including your URL (aka your web address) on all of your other promotional material might seem like an obvious thing to do, yet there are many people who don’t take full advantage of this technique.

Your URL should be printed on anything and everything possible including stationery, business cards, brochures, invoices, literature, store-front signs, and even vehicles.

By doing this, you are maximizing the use of existing materials to advertise your site as well as reinforcing your brand to all existing clients.

2. Social Media

First of all, what is Social Media? This is a term that includes blogs, social networking sites, social bookmarking sites, and forums. These sites encourage people to interact with each other and make it very easy to get your message out to the masses.

There are millions of people using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn everyday to make comments, share personal information, and share links.

Social bookmarking is a way to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Technorati, Delicious, and Slashdot.

So, go create a profile for your business at any or all of these sites and use it as a way to expose more people to the content on your site. Of course, this will be even more effective if you actually engage in conversations and interact with other users rather than just “spamming” them with promotional links.

3. Submit your site to Online Directories

There are a ton of different directories online. Some are all inclusive, some are industry specific, and some cater to local businesses.

Two free options for listing your local business are Google Local Business Center and Yahoo! Local. These are both great ways to make sure people can find your site when doing a local search.

4. Traditional Advertising

Yes it is true that the print media industry is declining as more and more people realize how much more efficient and effective the internet is. That being said, print media is still important. This is even more so for local businesses.

Many people still read newspapers and magazines for their news and a nicely designed print ad could draw them to your site. Another traditional form of advertising is the radio. Radio ads can help attract listeners to your site as well.

Keep in mind that these methods may not work well for certain types of businesses. It is important to know your intended audience before shelling out the cash for traditional advertising.

5. E-mail Marketing

When I say e-mail marketing, I don’t mean unsolicited mass mailings, also known as spam. I’m talking about things like starting a Newsletter, or including a custom signature at the bottom of all e-mail correspondences.

A periodic e-newsletter is a great way to keep people interested in what you do. It is important to include and emphasize a sign-up option on your site. Make sure it is easy to sign up. Also, using a well designed HTML e-mail template will make your newsletter more appealing.

A custom signature at the bottom of all e-mails should include your name, business name, URL, with an active link to your site and can also include an image of your logo or a custom designed banner ad. This signature will be seen by everybody you communicate with through e-mail. It will make it easy for them to get to your site and reinforce your brand.

After doing all these things, how will you know if they are working? The best way is to use some sort of statistics program to track activity on your website.

Most commercial hosting packages include statistics tracking abilities, but I recommend Google Analytics because of its great depth, flexibility and visually appealing reports and graphs.

If you need help setting goals or analyzing your data, I offer this as one of my services. Please contact me to discuss in more detail.

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency

Dynamic Content: Why it’s Essential

There are many reasons to have dynamic content on your website, but the two most important are to increase traffic and to increase sales. Dynamic content will drive traffic to your site by helping give you a better ranking in search engine results. It can drive sales (assuming you’re selling something) or conversions by giving your visitors a better user experience.

What is dynamic content?

Back in the day, a hypertext document on the world wide web was a static file that looked the same to everybody who viewed it. If the page was lucky, it would be updated periodically, but for the most part, it just remained the same and collected virtual dust. If you’ve ever stumbled across a website that looks like it hasn’t been updated in 10-15 years, it probably hasn’t.

In contrast, a dynamic document on the world wide web can be customized for each user based on individual conditions or parameters. So it could show different content depending on the time of day, a user’s profile, operating system, browser or just about anything else.

Sometimes referred to as “conditional content”, it allows a more unique experience for the user with personalized messages and such. With dynamic content, the content is separated from the design and stored in a database. The content seen by the user is generated at the time of request at the server level using CGI, ASP, PHP, or a content management system.

How does it drive traffic?

Search engines, or more accurately, their search bots (also known as spiders) crawl the web and index the sites they find. They prefer dynamic content over static content because they figure something that changes often is more relevant than something that doesn’t. Therefore a dynamic page is more likely to ranked higher on a search engine’s results page and that means more traffic to the site.

How does it drive sales?

Even more important than its SEO benefits is the fact that human visitors like to see something different each time they visit a site. It keeps them interested. If it looks the same every time they visit, they are much less likely to return again. We humans also tend to enjoy an experience more if it’s personalized. For example, when a user logs in, they might see a custom welcome message that includes their name. No matter how it’s done, if a user has an enjoyable experience while using your site, they are much more likely to return again. They are also more likely to tell all their friends how great your site is, buy your widgets, visit your physical location or sign up for your service.

Using a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc., allows you to control your dynamic content very easily, hence the massive number of “blog” type sites that have popped up over the last several years. The key to this is quality not quantity. You must give your audience something that is interesting or important to them.

So, keep it fresh, keep it flexible, keep it dynamic.

Web Design Marquette, MI | Middle Ear Media - Creative design studio & web agency