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The value of guest blog posts

Published 22 June, 2011 | By TashWord

A few days ago, I raised the question of reading guest blogger posts in a favourite blog.

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?

Posted in blogging | Tagged blog, content, guest, ideas, post | 6 Comments

Searching people are important

Published 13 June, 2011 | By TashWord

For me, once you take out emails and website admin tasks (including writing blog content), then my key activity online would be using a search engine to find something. Apparently I’m not alone – this is the most common activity after emailing.

Which of course means that people searching are an important part of your online presence – if your site doesn’t get in search results and doesn’t help people landing on the site from a search engine then you are risking a potentially large market.

What’s more, if someone is searching the odds are they are willing to buy – I know I wouldn’t bother searching for a local dentist unless I want a new dentist or search for ‘computer mouse retailer’ for fun. So it seems logical to me that someone reaching your site from a relevant search engine search is likely to want your product/service. Especially in comparison to someone who is just curious about their friend’s latest social media like or follow.

Given the potential importance of people visiting your site from a relevant search, why would anyone waste their time getting people to visit from an irrelevant search? For instance, I am happy if you found my site (and blog) through a search for ‘business writer’, ‘blog content’ or ‘writing eBooks’ but see no point enticing you with ‘childcare provider’ or ‘dress maker’. It costs me time and possibly money to get found via a search engine so I don’t want to waste it on people who are not interested in my services – and I don’t want to waste their time and put them off side either.

So how can we help get the right search engine results? Here are my suggestions, and I’d love to hear everyone else’s ideas, too, as I won’t say no to more targetted traffic, either!

use appropriate keywords in your writing (ie repeat those words you think people may use to find you)
minimise the repetition of words that are not relevant to your message – for example, you may be a designer writing about your latest website project but avoid writing ‘medical business’ too often as you discuss the work
build up some links to your site – quality content is the key here but it does take a bit more than that
if looking for backlinks (ie links form other sites to yours), ask them to use appropriate text for the link and aim for related sites. Use the same strategy if someone offers to link to you, or even ask anyone who has added a link without contacting you
add page-relevant keywords to your blog tags or page metadata as this helps direct a search engine to the right topics. Note I wrote page-relevant so don’t just use the same words on every page – for example, my tags for this post will be ‘search’, ‘keywords’ and ‘relevant’ which would not work on many of my other pages

Of course, it is crucial to write contact of interest to real people and tweak it for search engines rather thna write for search engines and hope people find the hidden meaning.

How else can you get good search engine traffic to your site/blog?

Posted in blogging, marketing, web content | Tagged content, keyword, relevant, search, writing | Leave a comment

Blogging when you’re not around

Published 15 May, 2011 | By TashWord

Even small business owners are allowed to take a holiday or some sick leave 🙂 Obviously that can leave a lot of tasks to be prepared for or done in your absence, but I’m just looking at your blog – what happens to your blog when you take some time off work?

Running a blog and developing a readership takes time and effort; ignoring your blog for a while can undo much of that effort. So how can you manage take away from your business without letting your blogging efforts weaken or even waste away?

The following list gives some suggestions – the best approach will depend on your blog of course, and on how long you are taking off, and the best approach may be quite different next time you take a break.

do nothing 🙂 Just let your last blog post sit on the front page until you return.
Very quick and easy solution but not so good for your search engine rankings and keeping any regular readers happy (unless your break is shorter than the gap between normal posts anyway)
announce your intentions and leave your blog to sit for the duration
Again, very quick and easy to do, but letting people know offers some customer service and keeps people informed. You may still loose some readers and search engines points, depending on how long you leave the blog. Letting your blog sit could give everyone a break or it could mean a lot of catching up posts when you return (especially if you rely non news and events as topics)
Schedule posts so the blog keeps having new content without you physically being present.
This requires preparation time in writing multiple posts in advance but is great for maintaining a blog presence, search engine rankings and regular followers. You may have a lot of comments to moderate when you return. Of course, this is less effective if your blog is based on breaking stories and current events as they are harder to write in advance and will need some catching up on when you get back.
My tip if you like this method is to have some spare blog posts written throughout the year – these can then be scheduled during your break without having to write heaps of posts just before you go.
Invite a guest blogger or two to post on your blog.
Obviously this keeps your blog full and current while you’re away with less preparation time than scheduling many posts. The greatest time saving for you is if they have access to post directly to your blog but you get more control if they provide the posts for you to schedule before you leave. Giving a guest blogger access also means they could moderate and respond to comments, too.
Guest blogging may add some new ideas to your blog which readers may like but it is a different voice which some readers may not like – if you know your readers and choose an appropriate guest blogger you can better gauge the likely response.
While multiple guest bloggers adds variety to your blog and avoids issues around readers disliking one guest, it does involve more work on your part – finding and choosing guest bloggers, then discussing topics and setting up access/scheduling posts
Maintain your blog from a distance – that is, write posts while you are away.
The beauty of a blog is that you can access it from anywhere that has internet access so you can write posts away form the office.
Writing posts while away solves all the issues of keeping your blog momentum going and comments moderated, with little preparation needed. However, it is not going to do much towards you relaxing on a holiday, building relationships with family while on holidays or allow you to recover if you are on sick leave. Taking a break is generally about giving yourself a change in routine to refresh your mind and body which isn’t going to happen if you keep working on your break.
On the other hand, if you are away from your blog because you are travelling for work or doing something not about relaxing, this is a viable option to consider – and something to do in a hotel room each night is not always a bad thing either!
Request readers to give their idea on a certain topic while you are away. For example, write a post asking a question and let it sit as your recent post for a few days. As readers answer, your blog is getting content and readers may get inspired in new ways.
Very quick and easy to set up and it could be effective for a short break if you have readers who comment willingly. However, this will look out of place if left for very long and runs the risk of unmoderated comments – to work, you will have to allow all comments to be approved automatically which means all sorts of things may be posted…
Use a RSS feed to fill your blog with external content.
Once it is set up, this will take care of itself so it is a low effort option and could work if you choose the feed source carefully. However, you will still have comments to moderate when you return but you need to trust the feed source – of course, you could just use a news site and provide commentary later. The disadvantage is that your content will not be unique– in fact, duplicate copy can be a negative for search engines.

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged blog, content, guest, maintain, moderate, regular | 2 Comments

Influencing search engine results

Published 3 May, 2011 | By TashWord

Having a website is of little business value unless it is getting seen by people, and preferably the type of people will buy your goods or service.

The March survey of small businesses showed that about two-thirds believe search engines is the key means of finding new customers. Now that may be more or less applicable in your industry or in Australia vs the USA (the survey was in the USA only), but search engines do account for a reasonable amount of website traffic.

Which means that making your website as attractive as possible to search engines is important. You can pay SEO (search engine optimisation is the term for making your site perform better in search engine formulae) or marketing companies to improve your site rankings, but there are also things you can do quite simply. In fact, I’d say some of the simple tasks should be done even if you are paying someone else to help you with SEO.

Here is a quick list of the easy SEO tasks you can do to increase your chances of being found in relevant searches:

use relevant keywords in your web and blog content
provide quality and relevant content on your site – a blog is excellent for this
aim your web and blog content at humans – search engines are getting more sophisticated at picking out fake pages of keywords
make your content web friendly – search engines read headings, too so make use of them
add links to relevant information (on your site and elsewhere)
encourage links to your site as much as possible without getting into link farms or spam
ensure your web pages and blog posts have relevant meta data (background information about the page) – which means it shouldn’t the same for every page
update your site and blog as often as you can to keep it fresh and give people a reason to come back for more – fresh content and visitors both help your search engine rankings

Posted in marketing, web content | Tagged content, fresh, influencing search engine results, keyword, search engine, seo, traffic, website | 8 Comments

encouraging links to your blog

Published 1 May, 2011 | By TashWord

On the assumption you want people to visit and read your blog, it is a good idea to get people to link to it.

Incoming links obviously lets more people see your blog exists and is also good for your SEO (search engine optimisation – in other words, getting search engines to list you high in their results).

I think the single step that is most effective in getting links is quality content – no one will link to your blog if you don’t provide useful or entertaining information. Regular additions to your blog will help bring people back, too, and repeat visitors are more likely to link to you.

Having said that, here are some more specific tips to increasing the number of links to your blog…

link to other blogs – only some will reciprocate but it is polite and shows you are part of the blogging community. People seeing your comments may lead to visitors to your blog or someone else linking to you
write something controversial or outrageous (but stay within your brand and identity or it’s all for nothing!) and ideally back it up with your reasons
summarise complex issues relating to your topic to help people understand what’s going on
disagree (nicely) with someone or a ‘well known fact’ in your industry
participate in something unusual and interesting – it could be a treasure hunt across the web, running a competition, blog action day or a local event
join in or run a blog carnival
offer something valuable to readers – an eBook, a theme, plugin, a sample, etc – that they will be willing to tell others about
write something very funny – people love sharing jokes!
report on something new – if it is based on research or observations only you have access to, even better
be the first to review/announce/do something
stay topical – for example, post information relevant to an upcoming event, discuss a news item in relation to your industry or give ideas for the current season
get involved in guest blogging – either posting elsewhere or inviting people to post in your blog
come up with your own terminology for something – sometimes phrases just stick but people like to read how it originated

It is also important to make your blog and posts appealing so remember the usual things like paragraphs, good spelling and grammar, using pictures as appropriate or for interest, use white space and avoid clutter.

The last tip is to actually ask for other blogs to link to you – but managing that is probably worth a post on its own!

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged blog, content, link, read, seo | 2 Comments

Making your blog easy to use

Published 28 April, 2011 | By TashWord

Doing some research this week, I’ve been to a large number of blogs but one in particular stood out and inspired a post from me 🙂 This blog has extremely long posts (even longer than those yellow-backed-sales letter-web pages!) which require a lot of scrolling – the home page is just one post! There is nothing else – no about us page, no list of previous posts or categories, not contact details.

I found it very frustrating (as I wanted to find some specific answers like what the blog was about without reading multiple essays!) It was also very strange to not see any of the common elements we’re used to for navigating a blog.

So it raises the question – what do you expect to find in the structure of a blog?

Posted in blogging, Business Communications | Tagged blog, content, easy to use blog, navigation, posts, user friendly blog | 1 Comment

Have promotional articles seen their day?

Published 29 March, 2011 | By TashWord

On Sunday I wrote about the value of promotional articles, but I thing there is another important question – have they be over used? are they just a waste of time?

My answer – no!

There are certainly a lot of promotional articles available, and many are not worth the time to read (or write!), but for a well prepared article there is definitely a return on the investment of preparing promotional articles.

A couple of reasons promotional articles are still worth considering to promote a business:

people still want content for sites, ezines and blogs – promotional articles save them time and provide a variety of information for their readers
things change so there is a need for current articles to replace out dated ones – for example, articles about employing staff in 2010 would not cover paid parental leave responsibilities
each topic has many angles so even if there are 50 articles on running a business as a parent, you may be able to suggest a different perspective or a new method
search engines and people want fresh content so even if Joe Blogs wrote a fantastic article on email marketing it could be time someone else wrote one so we don’t read Joe’s article in five different newsletters
we all have different approaches to learning so the way you explain something in an article may be a better way for some people to understand it

In short, the internet has put us into an information age and there is power to those who provide quality information. Promotional articles are an excellent way to share information so we have not seen the end of their value.

If you’re still doubtful, think about the last time you searched for information online – what were the most useful sources?

Posted in business info & tools, marketing, newsletter content, writing | Tagged article, content, fresh | 1 Comment

promotional articles worth the effort?

Published 27 March, 2011 | By TashWord

Business success is not guaranteed and there is no magic button to push that will get your business moving the way you want it to. Repetition of information and tasks is necessary, regardless of how boring it may seem. I have often heard that if you aren’t doing something then you don’t actually know and understand it – for example, if you drive fast you really don’t understand speed limits and why they exist.

If you have read a lot of my blog and heard me speak then you know I believe in the power of promotional articles. Well, the potential power as many have no idea how to use them properly and therefore fail with them.

What’s so good about promotional articles? In other words, why I do keep writing and talking about them, and giving tips on improving them?

Well here are some of the reasons:

you only have to write them once and you can get long term traffic to your website – for example, I wrote about chickenpox in 2003 and it is still one of the most popular articles on my site
you can build your credibility by showing you truly know your topic and are willing to share some of your knowledge – higher credibility means more trust from potential clients
you can get exposure to new opportunities – I have been approached to do media interviews because reporters have googled a topic and found one of my articles
using them on your site may mean fewer questions from people – this can save a lot of time from people just after information without ever planning to pay you
people will share your article (either giving a copy to a friend, linking to it or including it in a newsletter for instance) in a way that an ad would never be shared
it only costs you to produce it – having it on websites and in newsletters is free. Compare that to paying for an ad to be designed and then to place it anywhere…
it provides you with website content that search engines will reward you for – again, this equals more traffic

So do you see any value in using promotional articles for your business?

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged article, content, promotional, traffic | 5 Comments

Fowarding emails

Published 28 January, 2011 | By TashWord

Emails are so convenient – how did we ever do business without them? So quick to send a message to someone, or a group, and respond to things, emails are a great aid to communication.

However, we need to be careful with emails that we forward to others.

Before forwarding, check the entire email – there may be part of it you want to transfer to Mary but there may be parts Mary shouldn’t see. For example, there could be confidential information about someone else, unpleasant comments about Mary herself or out of date information that could cause confusion. This is a particular risk in very long email trails (i.e. if a number of replies are included in the one email) where subjects may even have changed along the way.

The other issue with forwarding emails is email addresses – if emailing a group of people, ensure that they can’t see email addresses they shouldn’t. The main exmaple of this is when you get jokes and stories that are passed from gorup to gorup – some emails I’ve got have given me access to at least 100 email addresses of strangers. Lucky for them I detest spam so will not abuse their email addresses, but not everyone will respect their privacy so it’s best to delete email addresses before forwarding.

Have you ever forwarded something you now regret? Did you find a way to remedy the situation?

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged adresses, content, emails, forward | Leave a comment

Chaos contentment or stress?

Published 17 September, 2010 | By TashWord

Are you stressed by what’s happening or how you see what’s happening?

Michelle Grice posted about being content with the chaos as a major goal she is working on. Instead of feeling out of control and powerless with the chaos that comes with running a business from home with young children, she is learning to accept the chaos as part of her life. The acceptance obviously doesn’t remove the hassles of deadlines being 2interrupted by sick kids, etc, but it does reduce the stress and discomfort Michelle feels about such hassles.

It is an interesting point – our attitude is a major factor in how stressful we find situations. And it can also have a flow on effect. Continuing with the work-from-home-mum example, if she is overwhelmed with work she will get stressed and be irritable when her children want her attention. On the other hand, if this Mum accepts she will be interrupted and is less stressed by it then she is likely to deal with the children more positively. And that makes the children more relaxed (and stops her feeling terrible about negative interactions later!)

Like most people, I understand Michelle’s feelings of chaos; I do work from home with young children for a start and it can be chaotic and overwhelming at times. Having to do lists is one thing that always helps me create some order from the chaos.

Further than to do lists, writing a list of what is chaotic and stressful has a number of advantages:

you get a lot of it out of your head so there is psace to think!
seeing it written down may show there is less that you thought
it allows you to be more objective and set priorities
it gives you a list of areas to work on – maybe once you see it written you may realise you DO have the power to change something

What other ideas do you have about changing your perception of chaos? Or about changing some of the chaos itself?

Posted in bit off track | Tagged attitude, chaos, content, list | Leave a comment

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