Don’t assume you can only use major events (like Christmas, the end of financial year and Mothers Day) for a seasonal flavour to your blog and newsletter. Find seasonable things throughout the year that are relevant for your clients – especially things around times when your marketing may need an extra boost.

Here is a list  of examples I’ve though of to get your creativity flowing…

• at the start of summer, a hairdresser writing about hair care can discuss protecting hair from chlorine and salt
• many businesses can find a new year’s link – make a resolution to get fit, sort out your accounts, update your will, care for your heath (quit smoking, visit a dentist, get your eyes tested, etc), buy new tyres or learn something new are just a few possibilities. Write about what is possible and give tips on how to achieve it
• a car detailer could write about how to make a car nice before taking out someone special on Valentines Day
• anyone in security (including computer security) can give tips on protecting empty homes and offices leading up to major holidays (Christmas, Australia Day and Easter for instance) when people won’t be at home
• any business can support an awareness or fundraising event so write about your efforts even if not directly related to your goods or services – e.g. give a discount to all new parents during world breastfeeding week, offer a part of profits to the cancer council in Movember. Use the article to explain why the cause matters. The event or cause may not be related to your industry but make sure it does align with your brand and company beliefs.
• write blog posts and newsletter pieces about clients or suppliers who do community work around a specific event (such as a client who shaves for ‘shave for a cure’ or a cafe who hosts a ‘biggest morning tea’)
• in September or October, a VA could write about spring cleaning a filing system and a ducting specialist can write about the importance of cleaning heating ducts
• a nutritionist could explain the benefits of hen eggs over chocolate eggs around Easter time
• a physio interested in RSI topics will find plenty of examples during January with the Hopman Cup, Brisbane International and Australian Open underway
• a town planner has the Tour Down Under and Tour de France to inspire posts about including bike paths in developments
• Clean up Australia Day is a great time to post about reducing clutter (any organisers or storage solution people?) and cleaning (cleaners, cleaning product sellers and chimney sweeps)
• a conservationist can give non-paper wrapping tips in December and environmentally friendly cleaning ideas for Clean up Australia Day or spring cleaning

What creative seasonal ties have you used in your blog posts and newsletter articles?

The heading or title of a blog post is usually the first thing someone will see and has a huge impact on whether anyone reads the actual content of the post, and therefore on the success of that blog post. Making it enticing is worth spending some time on, and you don’t want to undo those efforts by using inappropriate grammar and spelling.

So what is the correct format for a blog heading?

1.  Do not write it all in capital letters – that is considered to be yelling and therefore arrogant, plus it is harder to read anyway
2. Unless you have a formal and old-fashioned brand style, use sentence case rather than title case for the heading – that is, use as few capital letters as is necessary
3. Use basic grammar and punctuation rules such as a capital letter for a noun, match plural/singular nouns and verbs, and put apostrophes in the correct places
4. Check all words are spelt correctly
5. Make sure the title makes sense. Titles can sometimes have fewer words than an equivalent sentence (e.g. ‘the grammar of blog headings’ is fine for a title but in the body of a post I need to add more such as ‘the grammar of a blog heading can impact on your credibility.’) but include enough words to convey the meaning (I couldn’t use ‘The grammar blog headings’ for instance)

1. Flattery is common “this is the best blog”, “you write so well man” and “you must be an expert on this” are some recent examples in my spam folder. Genuine compliments are a good strategy, fake flattery is likely to get your comment deleted quickly
2. Sounding impressed but never giving any specifics is also a common spam technique so they can use the same message in many blog posts. “I’ve been searching for this information” and “I was just discussing this topic the other day with my cousin” have been in my comments innumerable times; a genuine message would be specific and relevant, such as “I needed to know about clear communications” or “Some friends and I were just discussing keywords“
3. there is a discrepancy between the name, email address and URL usually means it is spam. If your name is Mary why wouldn’t your email address be mary@ or m.smith@? However, if the domain of email and URL disagree, I refuse to click on the link or accept the comment. So to get comments accepted, be honest and transparent.
4. multiple links will be picked up by spam filters, but even the inclusion of one link in a comment makes me wary unless I know the person commenting. I look carefully at any comment with a link and decide if it looks safe enough to try the link myself – I certainly won’t accept a link without checking its content. Sometimes I will accept the comment but disable the link first, and I don’t think I’ve ever added a link in a comment I’ve left elsewhere unless they have the ‘latest blog post’ facility provided.
5. really poor English is often a give away, too – and the ones that are obviously nonsense made up of part sentences should need no explanation. Poor writing of course is not 100% proof of spam so I do read these comments to assess if they are genuine or not. My tip is to make your comments read well to avoid being thought spam and to give your comment more credibility and weight.

Because Facebook and Twitter are too easy. Keeping up a decent blog that people actually want to take the time to read, that’s much harder. And it’s the hard stuff that pays off in the end.

Besides, even if they’re very good at hiding the fact, over on Twitter and Facebook, it’s not your content, it’s their content.

The content on your blog, however, belongs to you, and you alone. People come to your online home, to hear what you have to say, not to hear what everybody else has to say. This sense of personal sovereignty is important.

Ownership of your content is important, but I particularly liked the acknowledgement that sometimes you have to accept the harder option as it is likely to produce the greater rewards. Sure it s easy to have a static website, fill your blog with others’ content, or post self-promoting or vacuous content on Twitter, but a quality blog will give much better long term results.

Do you think the hard stuff generally pays off more in the long term? Have you ever consciously chosen to do then are stuff to reap the reward unlikely to come from the easier option?

All related to business today, some back end details (like blog security) and some customer related issues, but all worth a read. In order that I think of them…

How to do yourself out of a thousand bucks – the ethics of business

Social media, trade secrets and why you shouldn’t give a rip about the competition - great message and enjoy the graphic too!

Why perfect is the only acceptable business measure

5 easy tasks to outsource as you grow your business

how to keep your WordPress blog secure

Working at home blog carnival –  in particular, I liked the included posts by Eldon and Blogging your passion (and my own of course!)

Customer Service Carnivale

Preparing business for difficult times 

Happy reading! If you have any comments on these posts, I’d love to hear them…

Your website is a window into your company.
Your website is the online equivalent of your office – the place people go when they want to do business with you.
~ Shama Hyder Kabani

I like the analogy of a website and an office – and it ties in nicely when my blog series on the establishment of a new website as the why is at least as important as the how…

The questions was “what is one plus three?” It wasn’t a challenge to find the answer but I did wonder if I should write ‘four’ or ‘4’. Given the question used words, I did too.

Unfortunately, the comment form just disappeared with the message “You got the spam message wrong” in its place. Not only was my beautifully crafted response gone forever, I wasn’t given the opportunity to write a replacement comment – and that blog misses out on another comment.

If there is any ambiguity about a compulsory question, there must be a second chance at answering it. Better yet would be clarity about the expected answer – for instance, it could have asked “what is one plus three? (answer in digits)” or “Give the number (in digits) equal to one plus three”.

A simple error yes but the consequences are that they missed getting a comment – How many comments do they miss each week because of this spam question? – and they have lost credibility as a site that values clarity (sorry to say it was a content writing service site, too).

What sort of spam protection do you hate or love?

He stated that he only accepts two links in a blog post and that having multiple links to one blog from within a post is of no real benefit. Do you agree with the lack of benefit? I don’t.

To me, including links is a means of giving more depth to whatever I am writing about. For example, if I am writing about good business communications I may link the terms good spelling, using capital letters and consistent style rather than explaining the value and meaning of each.

Of course there is also the advantage of potential additional traffic through increasing the number of links to and within my own blog. Even if only one link works for search engines, multiple links give a human more opportunities to visit my blog which is also important.

So for search engines, one link in a post may be sufficient but I see other reasons for adding links and judge the correct number of links by the content of the post (if you look through my blog you will see some posts have one or no links while others have many links).

Side note: limiting the links allowed for guest bloggers is a reasonable strategy, however, to avoid someone trying to spam your blog rather than providing quality content. I respect such limits and live to them when I supply guest posts, even when I think there are more links of value to the reader.

What does that mean? Well, the personality and thoughts of the person blogging come through in their posts, especially if read a few posts, so you see the human being behind the website. This is particularly true for businesses who previously had a static set of pages with information but showed little of the person(people) behind it.

So where do you draw the line between showing yourself and staying professional in a business blog? (That was a question to you rather than being a rhetorical question!)

I was inspired to ask after reading a blog post by Tuan where he openly discusses his blog traffic results for June- he gives actual figures as well as celebrating the fact he has reached a new high in traffic (congratulations Tuan!) and what he learned along the way. So many people will exaggerate or imply they are doing well but Tuan’s honesty is refreshing – and he does have a lot if visitors, too!

So would you be as open about Tuan, at least on certain topics, or do you prefer to keep a wall between you and your business image?

I think there are a number of reasons to value a guest post in a blog, although I do agree that too many guest posts could detract from the person I visit that blog to hear from.

If the guest blogger is filling in for my favourite blogger so that I continue getting content, that consistency and committment is of value to me. Of course, this is of less importance if the blog is erractic in providing content anyway, but we’ll ignore that for the moment!

Assuming that the blog has carefully selected any guest bloggers and the topics they post on, then the guest posts could provide me with an alternative point of view which can be really useful. It could also provide me with a new blog to read and gain information from.

A different person writing may also inspire different people to comment on my favourite blog which again can lead to new conversations, ideas and leads.

And on a more superficial level, if I comment on a guest blogger’s post, that guest blogger may then know of me and my blog…

While there are obvious advantages for the host and guest bloggers, I think guest blogging also holds advantages for the readers. What do you think?