For the past few weeks, I’ve been redesigning my personal blog. The reason?
I didn’t have enough sidebar space. I wanted a third one, so I had it redesigned to include the extra space.
And my business partner, Becki, kept telling me that I needed to “Loofah my columns”.
I had no idea what she was talking about until yesterday when she finally came clean.
Andy Wibbels has put out a series of videos called Blogging Blunders and I highly recommend that you check them out.
But here’s the video about the loofah. Despite your laughter, think about what he says…
What are your thoughts about the “prime real estate” of your columns?
Until next time…
Heather
PS. I’m in no rush to grab my loofah…
Permalink 6 CommentsIn my opinion, the iPod (or any MP3 player for that matter) is a great invention. The reason I say this is that with my iPod, I have access to so much more information. I’m talking about audio books and podcasts not to mention the multitude of music services available.
Now, access to both doesn’t require an iPod. You can listen to them through Apple’s free program, iTunes. But for me, I like to listen to them in the car or while I’m working on other things. Yes, I can read them, but why should I when I can listen to them at my leisure.
When I got my iPod, the first thing I did was search for marketing and advertising podcasts as well as downloaded Seth Godin’s “All Marketers Are Liars” audio book. I was able to listen to both while I cooked dinner, checked email, drove to and from the store, etc.
While I think that podcasts are a different way to promote your business, I also think they may be a hindrance. For example, many of the podcasts I downloaded had such horrible audio issues I found them hard to listen to. It was more distracting than informative. Another problem I had was that when I subscribed (for free), I noticed the last time they were updated was in May. How can you expect to gain any new business or get return business when you aren’t holding up your end of the deal? When I say “deal,” I’m speaking of the instance where you ask them to sign up for your podcast and; in return, they get valuable information.
The same holds true for anything that you are doing for your business, whether a newsletter, a blog, or even your website. People don’t return to stagnant sites. Why would they?
Take blogs, for example. I use an aggregator to subscribe to various blog feeds I discover form time to time. I do this for two reasons. One, I’m never going to find the time to go back through my favorites (if I even remember to bookmark them) and see if someone has posted something new. I don’t have the time. Some bloggers post three or four times a day while others post once or twice a week. It doesn’t matter when or how often you post, as long as you are posting. The other reason I use an aggregator is that they are delivered right to my email. Thunderbird offers this with their software. Outlook offers a plugin so that you can get them delivered to your inbox. I can then read them on my own schedule. When I see that someone doesn’t post often (and by often I mean at least once a week) I typically delete the feed. If they aren’t willing to give me what they promised, I’m not willing to stick around.
That’s not to say that you can’t go on vacation, or take a break, or even suffer from blog depression; however, most people see that your posts are regular and if you’re gone for a bit, they are more likely to be patient.
Distribute newsletters in a timely manner. If you promise monthly newsletters, don’t send them bi-monthly or semi-monthly. Some visitors to your site may be intrigued by a monthly newsletter; and if they get two in one month, some may see it as a bonus, some might not. You could lose subscribers.
With your website, keep it fresh. Keep it updated and add new content. Give people a reason to bookmark it and continue to return. With my first site, it was a standard virtual assistant site. I had the about me page, what I offered, my rates, etc. I have a feature with my stat counter that shows me roughly how many people bookmark my site. With the addition of the resources and the blog, the number of people who have bookmarked it has nearly tripled. Why? I give them reasons to come back.
The key to successful marketing and, consequently, a successful business is to keep your business’ name at the top of the minds of those you are trying to reach. By keeping things fresh, clean, and updated, you cannot escape them.
Until next time…
Heather
Permalink 7 CommentsAutomation: The key to your business success
Happy Memorial Day!
I’m sitting in the middle of no where in West Virginia but due to the automated processes that I’ve set up for my blog, I’m able to still have a post when I’m taking a much deserved long weekend!
The key is figuring out how you can automate some of your processes to free up your time. This blog post has been loaded in to Word Press for over a week now, along with the blog posts for the next few weeks. It took an hour of my time and took a weight off my shoulder.
There are many ways that you can automate your business. Have you found all of them?
What are some of the ways that you automate your business?
Until next time…
Heather
Blogging Set It and Forget It!
Are you a blogger and just dont have time to post something every day?
Its a problem I had. With everything going on, how was I supposed to stop and find something creative, witty, etc to put on my blog?
I got smart.
The first thing I did was hire a virtual assistant to help me. I use wordpress and taught her the ins and outs of posting. So when I came across something insightful, I would fire off an email and she would add it to my blog. She was even GREAT about emailing me and telling me that she needed something because it had been awhile since I had posted.
Then I got smarter.
I was still feeling the pressure of not posting original items and she was always emailing me telling me that she needed something to post. So I sat down one night and wrote one month of blog posts.
I determined that I wanted to post at least three times a week and so I just started writing. There are days that its just a link to another site. There are other days where Ive included an article that Ive written. There are some days when its someone elses article.
Do you know how long it took me to write one months worth of blog posts (in my case, 12)? A little over an hour. I sat down on a Friday night and just collected information and wrote. Before you knew it, I was done. I fired them off to her and guess what? I dont have to worry about my blog for another 30 days — until its time to write the next set of posts.
Then she got smart.
She figured out in WordPress that you could set up you posts to post automatically on the day and time that you choose. Once she gets them from me, she plugs them all in there with the day and time that they are supposed to appear and then she can forget about it. Talk about automation at its finest!
This worked so well for us that we started automating Marketing Made Simple as well. In about two hours I had 4 issues done and sent to her. She could then go and format them in the template that I made and set them up in Aweber. http://www.valleyva.net/aweber.html
Talk about set it and forget it!
Think about ways that you can automate your business. How can you free up more of your time?
Until next time
Heather
2006 Heather Jacobson
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Heather Jacobson is publisher of the bi-monthly newsletter Marketing Made Simple as well as a business coach with VATraining.com, speaker, and author of “Making Dollars Out of Cents: 101 Tips for the Frugal Marketer”. If youd like to market your business without breaking the bank, sign up for your FREE tips at http://www.10freetips.com
Permalink 4 CommentsHow Blogs And RSS Boost Your Search Engine Visibility
Copyright 2005 Priya Shah
Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.
Search engine marketers especially favour blogs because they have a number of features that make them the darling of search engines.
1. Fresh, Updated, Relevant Content
When you write a good blog about a theme that you’re passionate about and post to it frequently, you’re creating fresh, keyword-rich, content that search engines love.
2. Natural, One-Way Links
Search engines view links to your site as a recommendation of your site content. More links pointing to your site or blog boosts your visibility and search engine rankings.
Google gives more weight to natural, one-way incoming links, and blogs make it easy to get two types of one-way links to your site.
Similarly Themed Blogs
A well-written, authoritative blog, with unique content, is likely to get linked to from a number of other bloggers writing on similar topics. These are natural links that are viewed highly and given more weight by search engines like Google.
RSS Feed Syndication
Blogs and the RSS feeds built into them, help you build valuable, one-way links to your site by syndicating your content online.
3. Get Indexed Within Hours
When you post to a blog it pings a number of services that list blogs. This notifies the service that your blog has been updated.
Search engines like Google give more weight to blogs that are updated regularly. It is possible to get your pages indexed in Google and other search engines within hours of writing your first blog post.
Compared to the time it takes to index a website (days, even weeks), you can see why blogs are better search engine optimisation tools than static websites.
Indirect SEO Benefits of Blogs
Besides the SEO benefits, a well-written, authoritative blog can also create publicity and branding for you, which promotes even more people to read and link to your blog.
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Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine optimization firm, SEO & More Request the detailed version of this whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visability