Fairy Blog Mother

Sidebar imagery sets blogs apart

Written on Thursday 8 September 2011 by Alice

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There is a design agency I keep an eye on. I like them because they are distinctly visual (I suppose design agencies are supposed to be), but it is the myriad of colours and the way they use images that attracts my attention.

This is not confined to just their graphics on paper, but online too. Their style is distinctive, and may not suit everybody, but simplicity combined with complexity is tastefully intertwined, and they have found a way to put this concept onto their websites and blogs they also design for.

If you are into NLP, you will know that people understand and process things in different ways. Some respond visually, others to words and the rest to sounds. A blog can use all these to put its messages across. By using all of these media, there is a better chance of capturing the attention of more potential followers and customers.

A WordPress.org blogsite allows you to do virtually anything you like on your sidebars. You could go down the usual route and add in conventional widgets which are mainly text-based, or you could go out on a limb and create linked images. This is particularly apt if your main subject lends itself to a visual presence, and each image is specifically designed to look ‘clickable’ (three-dimensional, enticing and understandable), so your visitors could end up have far more fun exploring your site than an ordinary blog. After all, isn’t that what you want them to do?

Having images on your sidebars linking to various areas of your website should be in addition to the navigation bar, because there will always be people who prefer using that method to enter a site (reference NLP) and won’t understand the concept of clickable pictures. Don’t discriminate people who are wired differently from you, they all have to be accommodated if you are going to make your website succeed.

blogs and blogging, design makes a difference, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: attention, blogs and blogging, design agency, graphics, images, navigation, NLP, sidebars, text based, visitors, visual, websites, widgets - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

You need to share to get more traffic

Written on Wednesday 31 August 2011 by Alice

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I’ve had a lot of questions recently about how to get lots of traffic to a blog and whether it is worth participating in social media to do this.

Unfortunately, if you want to promote your blog successfully, you need to think in the long-term. As with all marketing methods, nothing can be done properly overnight, and that does include using social networking sites.

You need to use social media to build up your reputation and your readers’ understanding about you. We all can’t be blessed with instant recognition and a truly magnetic personality that instantly attracts thousands of followers – those that appear to have these qualities have worked really hard behind the scenes before unleashing themselves on their public. Even those that seem to ‘pop out of the woodwork’ really have been slaving away at their promotional tactics and business presentation.

So to go back to the original concept, yes, you do need to use social media to increase your blog’s traffic. The cold, hard reality is that you need to work at gaining followers. This can be accomplished by becoming the best in your field, your niche, or whatever area your blog’s subject is about.

The 80/20 rule also applies here. Give away 80% of what you know and retain the truly best bits within the 20% you charge for. Win followers on your side by sharing your knowledge; help people, let them get to know you and trust in you, gain from the added value you have given them to improve their lives, and make them believe there is much more to have if they maintain their connection with you.

And while you are succeeding in collecting a huge number of followers, friends and subscribers, you’ll be feeding your new posts regularly into your social networking profiles and Twitter stream. It is there you will have a potential audience to read your wonderful new content, which will allow your blog traffic stats to go up and up.

To make these stats even better, participate in some sharing activities of your own. Nobody tolerates a one-sided relationship, so start reading other people’s blogs, comment on their posts, retweet them on Twitter, share them on Facebook, recommend them on social bookmarking sites, refer readers to them, offer to write guest posts and interview them for your own blog.

And after a while you’ll start to enjoy this social networking lark that so frightened you in the beginning – and as well as making lots of friends, associates, contacts and business prospects, your blog’s traffic will be improving all the time!

Magic Moment: How to hide pages

Written on Monday 29 August 2011 by Alice

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Here is a very quick magic moment for the Holiday Bank Monday. There may be an occasion when you have created some pages in your blog and you will want to hide them. All you need to do is to change them to draft status.

Open up the page you wish to hide as if to edit it, and go to the Publish menu at the top right hand corner:

You’ll see that the status is ‘Published’, and next to it is an ‘Edit‘ link. Click on the link:

It will open up as a drop down menu. Click on it to reveal all its contents:

Select ‘Draft’ and click on the ‘OK’ button:

And don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ button to confirm your changes. Now when you go into your blog you will see that this particular page is now not visible.

To reverse the situation, go through the procedure and select ‘published’ again.

Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: change, created some pages, draft status, edit, hide, procedure, publish, update - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Make it easy for your readers to take action

Written on Thursday 25 August 2011 by Alice

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The whole point of a blog is that it enables your readers to interact with you. That is the beauty of Web2.0, and sets it apart from static websites that just sit there looking pretty (if you’re lucky) and boring (if you’re complacent).

So to make the experience of visiting your blog exciting for your readers, there are loads of apps and widgets at your disposal to upload and activate, which will keep your visitors really busy!

I don’t expect you to put everything available into your blog, or it will look like a dog’s breakfast and nobody will be able to choose what to do next, and will probably result in them running away! But there are some elements that should be present if you are to maintain the interaction a blog deserves.

One is to encourage some sort of subscription service. There are so many ways of doing this, varying from sophisticated sign up boxes to buttons you press after making a comment. For me it is important to make it very obvious to the reader that you want them to subscribe, and to stage it so they literally fall over the methods for doing so. I have often landed on a really good blog that has interested me, and wanted to keep in touch with the latest posts, only to hunt drastically around the site to look for a method of subscription, even to sign up to a RSS feed.

Of course RSS feeds always don’t fulfill my needs. I hate it when it merely leads to bookmarking the blog from my browser bar – I can’t be bothered to check that every day for new posts. What I am looking for is something that sends the newly-published posts to my in-box or to a reader in my search engine provider. This can be accomplished by creating a RSS URL through Feedburner (or equivalent), or using the various plugins or widgets available from WordPress. Read about one of them here: Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone.

Sharing is almost a requisite for blogs, as it has become commonplace to retweet a good post on Twitter or to share it on one of the many social bookmarking sites. This should definitely be encouraged, especially if you want to increase the traffic to your blog or expose it to a larger audience. There are lots of apps available to enable sharing, from individual transactions to collective mechanisms that allow the reader a choice in wherever he wants to promote your post. Even WordPress.com have a simple version: read Sharing is easy on WordPress.com to learn more.

These are just two interactive activities you could place on your blog, and there are many more to choose from which can enhance your blog’s performance and increase its interest factor. Just examine the widgets available for WordPress.com, and check out the myriad of plugins available for WordPress.org, and do a bit of experimenting. If you don’t know what to expect, take a look at other blogs you admire to find out what they have to offer, and then see if you can find a way of emulating the same functions that take your fancy or stimulate you to take action!

Magic Moment: Blog Login knowhow

Written on Wednesday 24 August 2011 by Alice

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Since blogs are CMS (content management systems) they require their users to log into the background menus to write a post. This process is called login.

You can type the login instructions straight into your browser, such as blogdomain/wp-login.php, and it will take you immediately to a menu page for you to insert your username and password:

This is for my WordPress.com blog, and my username is the umbrella for all my blogs. It’s important to keep your username and password secret at all times, and WordPress helps by disguising the password with dots. It is also advisable not to use easy-to-work-out login details, to stop hackers from gaining access.

This is the login page for my WordPress.org blog. Since the two WordPresses are different, they have separate login pages. And, of course, I have different login details. For WordPress.org, once you’ve accessed the blog, it is for that blog only; you don’t have access to any other blogs.

There is an alternative method of getting to these login pages. You can add the Meta widget to your sidebar, which provides a login link. Once you have logged into your blog, the meta widget will change so you can gain access without having to go through the menu pages:

And if you are viewing your logged in blog, you can also gain access to the Dashboard by typing in blogdomain/wp-admin.

And of course, once you’re logged in to your WordPress.com blog, there are more links to help you gain quick access to different areas of your blog. At the top of your blog you will find a grey menu bar has been added:

Once you have logged into WordPress.com, you can can gain access to any other blogs you have been authorised to edit. That is what I meant by your username being an umbrella to other blogs. (My drop down menu reveals many blogs, so I have only shown three here.)

By selecting the blog you require, an additional drop down menu will provide access to various areas of your blog. Simply access Dashboard for convenience.

If you are already in the blog of your choice, you can gain quick access to your new post page (and other functions) through the ‘New’ link:

You can go directly to your stats page through this link:

And create a shortlink for your blog here:

And if you want to follow WordPress.com, just click on the ‘Follow’ button. Explore the other buttons to see what they contain, and have fun!

Oh, and there is a similar grey menu bar for my WordPress.org blog as well:

Ever considered an internal blog?

Written on Monday 15 August 2011 by Alice

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Here’s a thought for you: what about an internal blog within your organisation?

In the marketing course I finished this summer, one of my colleagues said her boss wrote daily in his personal blog purely to communicate with his staff. In it he discussed what had happened recently, his reactions to it, his ideas for the future, things he wanted done that day/week/month, any news his employees should know, celebrated successes and analysed mistakes, and published advice and top tips that was relevant.

He used his blog as not only a method of communication, but also as an archive. Employees could refer back to past posts (using the category or archive systems) to check on decisions, requests or commands made. Instructions were written down that could not be lost, and could be referred to later.

The blog was made private to selected readers or contributors, so the search engines could not access it. It was a perfect medium for communication and the staff could also use it to comment and leave feedback. OK, it may seem to be a little impersonal, but don’t forget the blog could be accessed by any computer in the world, as long as the correct usernames and passwords were used, so ideal for employees on the move.

WordPress have so many features that can be adapted to suit your business in a myriad of ways. What else would you use your blog for?

How clean is your theme?

Written on Wednesday 10 August 2011 by Alice

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I took the plunge and changed my theme again – but how many of you have noticed?

The theme experts will know exactly where to look – and I hope they will approve – but the whole idea was to make improvements to the insides of my theme, and ultimately my blog’s performance, by having a major ‘deep clean’.

Setting up a WordPress.org blog isn’t majorly expensive if you do it yourself (though hiring a web-designer to do it for you may be), but apart from the costs of hosting there doesn’t seem to be many more demands on your budget. Plugins and other applications are free (many suggest you make donations) and so are a very large quantity of themes. If you know a bit of HTML and PHP you could go into the CSS and make necessary changes – but only if you have the knowledge and necessary know-how.

But sometimes this false economy can create problems that you may not be aware of. You may be very proud of your free theme and how you have changed it. I know, I was! For many months I stood back and admired my blog’s theme, it’s purple boxes and mouse-changing coloured links. That is, until some very kind blogging benefactor pointed out the defects…

There is no such thing as a free lunch. My free theme had lots of unseen code behind it clogging up my search engine optimisation. Even my stats plugin wouldn’t work properly, and I had to rely on Google Analytics to monitor my blog’s performance (not that there is anything wrong with that, but it is only one side of understanding traffic and connectivity). Apparently he could see the ‘blockage’ with his software and advised me to purchase a paid-for theme. Only then would I have a ‘clean’ theme with no restrictions, freeing up my visibility on the web with a view to increasing my audience and blog awareness.

For a while I resisted. I was envisaging going back to freelancing and I had to save up for the fees of a diploma in digital marketing course I am starting next month (I believe in continued self-development). But all that time my poor blog was grinding to a halt under so much blogging code-crud and overbearing pressure I’m surprised it was working at all.

But last week I bit the bullet and bought a Headway theme. It was a bit of a financial shock, but I’m glad I did it. The day I transferred it onto my blog and started to develop my design, I received 208 hits! Amazing! I knew that was the case because my blog stats started to work again – a definitely worthwhile reason to have installed it. The result, after a lot of trial and error (I do like a challenge), hasn’t made much difference visually (I had no intentions of doing so), but the performance value has rocketed!

So now I will wallow in my improved blogging situation and keep you monitored of the differences it will make – and it will be in ideal time to work on my SEO to see what makes a difference and what does not.

The jump between each WordPress is bigger than you think

Written on Monday 8 August 2011 by Alice

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In technical abilities, I would say there is quite a chasm between the two types of WordPress.

This is not always noticeable, as quite often blogs look very similar. But if you look closer there is a distinct difference, as the .org versions have a lot more applications at their disposal, and therefore are able to perform to a much more advanced level.

But – saying that, I am amazed (and pleased) to see how far WordPress.com has come over the years. So many of the applications previously only available as plugins have become standard, and are more easily accessible and activated due to all the hard work the developers at WordPress have put in.

I suppose the main difference is hosting. WordPress.com provides a free-hosted package so all you have to do is to decide on what your blog is going to be called, and then create it. You can make as many blogs as you like under your username, which you can create by opening a WordPress account (even without a blog).

WordPress.org, on the other hand, requires you to purchase your own domain name and hosting account for each blog. Getting a suitable URL is quite easy, but acquiring a suitable host is where advice is necessary.

Many hosting companies will happily say they are compatible with WordPress, but then there are two versions of being compatible. There are those that require technical knowledge to prepare your hosting server ready to receive WordPress, and those that make it very easy for you through just one (or two) click(s).

When searching for these ‘easy’ hosts (WordPress has a selection which they recommend), they will probably include an application called Fantastico, which takes all the stress out of the preparation for WordPress by doing it for you in advance. These hosting companies also will happily advertise that fact that they use Fantastico for WordPress.

Once you’ve done the necessary clicks and WordPress is installed into your hosted space, it will be in its default form, just like as for WordPress.com. But unlike WordPress.com who has everything ready for you to use in its sidebar instructions, you need to add in your own applications to your WordPress.org blog.

This is where having a FTP viewer platform like FileZilla comes into play. Right, explanations are probably needed here.

FTP stands for file transfer protocol, and it allows the transfer of files to different platforms on the internet. You will need to transfer your WordPress.org theme into your host’s server, into WordPress which you have set up, to be able to activate it.

You can see what is going on by using FileZilla, an FTP viewing browser or application that shows what is already set up in your host’s server, especially your WordPress files, and allows you to transfer (via FTP) your new files and plugins into your new WordPress.org blog. By putting the necessary files into your blog and activating them, your blog will start to become alive.

But all this extra technical stuff isn’t necessary for WordPress.com. It has been carefully formulated to take out any technical stress and angst for the novice blogger, and yet still provides an extensive amount of applications available for blogging use. These have been made as easy as possible to activate, providing extra time for actually writing posts and reaping the benefits they provide.

Blogging, blogs and blogging, CMS, Free Wordpress blogs, non-jargon, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: applications, blogging use, blogs and blogging, domain name, Fantastico, FileZilla, FTP, hosting account, hosts, plugins, technical, Wordpress - 5 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Magic Moment: Tweet old posts automatically

Written on Thursday 4 August 2011 by Alice

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This is an exciting new plugin (only available to WordPress.org users, sorry) I found while following my friends on Twitter. It randomly and automatically publishes old posts at specified intervals on Twitter, which will help promote your posts to a wider audience by giving them the extra exposure they deserve!

Go to http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/, search for ‘Tweet Old Post’ and it will be the first on offer:

Download it onto your computer and upload it into your FTP browser such as FileZilla. Alternatively go to your plugin page and request ‘Tweet Old Post’ and upload it to your plugins.

Once it’s installed, don’t forget to activate it…

…and click on ‘Settings’:

Fill in the fields to set up what you would like to happen, and don’t forget to confirm by clicking on the buttons at the bottom, to save your settings and to send a ‘practise’ tweet:

Here it is shown in TweetDeck – isn’t it exciting? Now your old posts will get a better chance of being read by a larger amount of people in different time zones throughout the Twittersphere!

Blogging help, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: automatic, exposure, FileZilla, FTP, plugin, promote your posts, retweet, settings, Tweet Old Post, TweetDeck, Twitter, wider audience, Wordpress.org - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Don’t leave your WP greet box plugin undone

Written on Thursday 21 July 2011 by Alice

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I often get frustrated when I find an excellent blog I want to subscribe to, only to find the RSS button or link leads to the bookmarking option. I hate bookmarking blogs, as it requires me to make an effort to click on my bookmarking tab, which I am obviously not going to do on a regular basis.

refers to WP.org

The default bookmarking feed is YourBlogURL/feed/rss, so I suggest this needs to be changed to a proper RSS feed via Google Feedburner (if you want to learn how to create a Feedburner RSS URL, then read the beginning of this e-course ‘Setting up a RSS feed’) which give the subscriber a choice of how they want to receive new posts – through a reader page or cookie on their Google Homepage. There I can glance over each day to see if any new posts have been published, keeping me in touch with what my fellow bloggers have been up to!

What is even more frustrating is when I come across WP Greet Boxes that are still in default mode, eg only leading to the bookmarking option. I, of course, have fully optimised my WP Greet Box (see the bottom of this post), so this post is to show you how to do the same.

Here is an unoptimised WP Greet Box:

And if you click on the link, you get the bookmarking option:

Location in 'Settings'

So after you’ve installed and activated your WP Greet Box plugin, you need to go into the settings of your WP Greet Box plugin to optimise it. Find its link in ‘Settings’ on the left hand sidebar:

Click on the link to go to the WP Greet Box page:

Here you have a complete list of all the different social media platforms your WP Greet Box will work in (there is a much more extensive list than shown here). You will need your RSS URL and other feed and social networking URLs at your disposal, as each entry can be optimised according to its nature.

Let’s concentrate on the default option at the top:

You can see I have optimised it, compared to the example at the beginning of this post. To do this, click on ‘Edit’ at the top right:

The simplest thing you can do is to change the Greeting Icon Link to your Feedburner RSS URL, so the subscriber will have more options to subscribe to your blog.

And if you’re feeling more adventurous, why not change the Greeting message to something more personal, including your Feedburner RSS URL within it. It requires only simple HTML, and can make all the difference to the subscriber.

Once you’ve finished, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button, and then start optimising the next entry. It can take a bit of time, but let me assure you it is worth it!

Blogging help, blogs and blogging, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs - Tags: bookmarking, excellent blog, feedburner, Google, RSS button, RSS URL, social media platforms, social networking, subscribe, WP Greet Box plugin - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

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