Fairy Blog Mother

How the position of a share request can go viral

Written on Wednesday 18 April 2012 by Alice

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Of course you want to encourage your readers to share your posts on social media. This is the way your blog’s content is exposed to a larger audience, spreading your expertise and message further afield than was possible before.

That is the beauty of social networking. It is also an indication that shows which format works best for promoting your blog, especially if you place counters against your share buttons.

Prolific bloggers like to share impressive statistics about the number of visitors they get to their blogs, and generally they have to work very hard to achieve these results. I confess that if I do get a higher than average record of click throughs to a social network, I’m hopping around the room with joy. This is because I don’t put in place carefully constructed marketing processes to get a higher sharing rate, which I really ought to do if this blog is to succeed.

However, this blog is not short of call to actions asking my readers to share. Usually I’m quite happy with a small number of responses (as long as I’m not stuck with a big fat zero), and it does depend upon which kind of reader has the opportunity to read what I have written.

But, when some kind, influential person does retweet my post, the effects can be amazing! Suddenly I’m looking at numbers this blog does not normally see; jaw-dropping statistics that totally surprise me. And it is also interesting which position these call to actions need to trigger the best response: ie the floating bar on the left that stays in the same place when the reader pans down.

Recently I had to change this plugin, as suddenly the original floated too much to the right, placing itself over the text. In fact I noticed this more with another blogger, and drawing his attention to it, persuaded him to find an alternative. Ever since the new version was installed, the counters have recorded phenomenal figures – in spite of it not being visible on the main blog page.

I can only deduce that my other plugin that retweets old posts managed to catch the attention of beneficial blog readers who were suitably appreciative enough to share my posts, providing a higher readership than had been encountered before. I am thoroughly pleased that the effort I took in activating these plugins: ‘sharebar’ and ‘tweet old post‘, has finally paid off, and suggest that those who have WordPress.org blogs should install them as well.

blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, online marketing, other social media, social networking - Tags: call to actions, higher readership, larger audience, other social media, plugins, promoting your blog, readers, retweet old posts, share bar, share posts, social networking, visitor statistics - 0 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

The use of blogging within social media campaigns

Written on Monday 5 September 2011 by Alice

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I’ve said it many times before that your blog should be the hub of your social media marketing strategy. It is the alpha and omega of marketing online, from it your social networking exploits can issue forth to their audiences and be there to collect the finished results.

Of course blogging should take centre stage. Many companies overlook or brush aside blogs, as they think they are used purely for self-expression. They fail to understand the importance for communication to get the overall marketing message across. An archive of easy accessible material aimed at education, entertainment and information-based articles specifically written for the audience in mind.

Using social media within integrated marketing campaigns can only work if there is a realistic objective. If this is understood, there are various methods which can put in place to guide the campaign towards the ultimate goal. Blindly participating on social media without a proper aim may be enjoyable in the short term, but it can be also be viewed as a waste of time because nothing is seemed to be achieved. Only by aiming towards a proper outcome will social media become useful and powerful within the overall marketing campaign.

Blogging and social media used in combination will enable companies to learn all they need to know about their customers. Social networking isn’t about selling, the focus should be on communication, conversations, observation, following and understanding trends, catching breaking-news early and taking action before the competition. Used properly, companies can almost ‘merge’ with their target market: comprehending, empathising, educating, gently changing the general shift towards their products or services without actually using direct selling tactics.

The power of integration should be two-way, through the encouragement of responses from the readership and inviting followers to subscribe so they are constantly kept up to date with the latest posts. And, of course, blogs can be easily and effectively integrated within all social networking profiles through RSS, thus extending the audience and exposing the marketing campaign over a wider area within the web. And by participating in sharing and referral tactics within social bookmarking sites will also prompt further expansion of the messages involved, as well as a larger awareness of the blog and its authors.

blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, online marketing, social networking - Tags: audiences, blog, communication, conversation, education, information, integration, marketing strategy, objective, observation, other social media, RSS, social networking, taking action - 1 Comment - 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!

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!

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?

Magic Moment: How to publicise from the publish menu

Written on Tuesday 2 August 2011 by Alice

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If you have been reading my posts, you will recollect one about how easy it is to share via WordPress.com. Here I showed you how to feed your blog posts into your Twitter stream, so that whenever you publish a post, a tweet immediately appears in Twitter with the post’s title and accompanying link back to your blog.

This Magic Moment #2 is a continuation from this (so this facility will only be in place if you have followed the procedures laid out in my previous post), and will show you how to customise what this tweet will look like, so optimise its performance within Twitter.

After you’ve finished writing your post, you will automatically go to your Publish Menu at the top right corner of the page:

Above the ‘Publish’ button you will notice ‘Publicize: Twitter Edit‘.

Click on ‘Edit‘:

Now the Publicize box has opened, which will allow you to add a ‘Custom Message’ to the tweet, either before and/or after the colon.

Let’s add in the Fairy Blog Mother hashtag:

Now when the post is published, and fed into my Twitter stream, the tweet will include my hashtag before the title and link. This is a way of personalising my post feeds so that tweeps know the post is from me.

Of course you can add anything you like, such as ‘Newly published post’ or whatever. And you can also add a hashtag, such as #blogging, after the colon if you are keen to capture a particular Twitter audience.

Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, social networking - Tags: blog posts, custom message, feed into Twitter, hashtag, publicize, publish, sharing, title and link, Twitter stream - 2 Comments - Why not leave a comment?

Don’t neglect your About page

Written on Tuesday 26 April 2011 by Alice

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Fairy Blog Mother

Lots of new bloggers ask me to check out their blogs. One thing I notice that is increasingly common is that they have either forgotten to fill in their About page, or have done so inadequately.

WordPress automatically give you an About page when you create your blog. Recently I’ve noticed the text they put in to show you want you can do has been extended, as the previous message was very bland and uninviting. Now you’re shown what exciting things you could say about yourself, with the use of quote text for your testimonials or fans’ comments. This is a vast improvement, but it’s never the same as putting in your own details about yourself.

I confess it took me a long time to get round to adding in content to my About pages when I first started blogging. I was quite happy creating additional pages with all sorts of interesting stuff in them, but not my poor, neglected About page. I suppose it’s because I’m a bit ashamed about blagging on about myself, I would much rather do stuff to help others.

Even so, you need to understand that your readers are very interested in you (if they like your blog and visit it regularly or subscribe to it) and they would like to know a bit more about the person who is writing all these posts. I felt a bit better about it once I had some professional portraits done by a photographer friend of mine (he owed me a favour), so that was one hurdle overcome.

And a very necessary one, I consider it important include a picture of yourself, not an image of something else! (Oh, dear, I suppose I do hide behind the Fairy Blog Mother logo when I write these posts, but you can see a proper picture of me on my About page.) I have seen examples of wine glasses and fluffy animals, let alone company logos, so think carefully about how you want to be ‘seen’ by your audience. What is the reason for feeling the need to be so anonymous?

The next task is to sort out which elements about you are relevant to your readers. OK, you can go on about your life, family, hobbies, fads, pets, aspirations, past experiences or whatever, but if these aren’t interesting to your readers, or aren’t connected to your blog’s niche or subject, then they may seem a little strange or even over-indulgent.

Even so, it’s important to bear in mind that a blog is a part of social networking, so remember to connect socially with your audience by not writing in a stuffy, uninteresting way that would put people off. Relate to your readers so they feel they are able to get to know more about you, and do so in a friendly, forthcoming and inviting manner that is interesting, entertaining and engaging.

And add in that you would like to get to know them too, as a blog’s readership is vital for its success, so encouraging any comments would be very beneficial! Your blog should become the hub of your social networking activities, and this means relating to those who read your blog as much as them to you!

When is the best time to blog?

Written on Friday 22 April 2011 by Alice

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Everybody has different body clocks, so they choose their own time to write their posts. Some people get their inspiration first thing in the morning, others late at night once they’ve been suitably stimulated by various happenings during the day. Of course you can write your post whenever suits you, only to save it in draft for later editing or, if you’re sure it is ready, schedule it to go out at a more appropriate time.

So when is it a good time to publish? I find this varies quite considerably, according to which particular media I have ‘fed’ my blog post to, so it can be read by the audience that populates it.

It all depends when my readership is more likely to be participating on social media. With Twitter the pace is so fast your post could easily be superseded by other news as soon as it hits the Twitter-stream – unless your followers have set up their own streams which includes you in it. That’s how I keep abreast of the worthwhile Twitters so I can interact with them and follow their blog posts whenever they are published.

You need to work out when is the most favourable time your fellow social networking friends are going to be around to read your posts. Do you catch the early birds, the mid-morning browsers, the lunchtime feeders, the afternoon skivers, or the evening perusers. Ideally you need to schedule your post’s feed so it either catches the most popular time, or multiple entries to get a better chance of being read at another part of the day.

Feeds to other social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn will allow your post to be visible for longer before it is usurped by its successor, and subscription posts that are sent to email inboxes or search engine reader pages will languish there quite happily until they are read.

And a post’s journey is not finished with the subscriber – the practice of sharing posts, through Twitter, social bookmarking sites and natural referral techniques will prolong the life of a post so it can reach another form of readership.

So the answer is to find that ‘optimum’ time that will spark off the chain reaction to send your post on its merry way, as it transverses across the world wide web in pursuit of both new and tried and trusted audiences.

An example of how regularly updating succeeds

Written on Monday 18 April 2011 by Alice

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I have a good friend whose business is doing extremely well. This is very good news, and I was intrigued to know her secret.

It all boils down to interaction, updating and communication with her customers through social networking and her website. I know this website is all about blogging, but she has accomplished the same concept within another form of social media, in this case Facebook.

Using social media is all about being social. It means coming down to the same level as your customers, understanding how they think, what they want, what they do, reacting to their input, appreciating their stories, joining in with them so they get them to know, like and trust you.

Only then can you selectively start to talk about your business in their terms, acknowledge their problems, offer suitable solutions in the form of free top tips, set up a competition, post up new ideas and observations, promote a special offer and provide information about new products and services. All this should be done in the customers’ point of view, beneficial, helpful and definitely without any hint of sales.

Being young and dynamic my friend has amassed several hundreds of Facebook followers, and having a brilliant business brain she understands she needs to regularly respond to them. She gets her staff to check her Facebook Group daily, and personally interacts with her friends’ messages, questions, comments and general postings.

She communicates like any other Facebook-user, posting up pictures of her successes, and tags testimonials from ecstatic customers who are happy to show off what she has done for them. It is the sharing element with each follower on an equal level that makes her so accessible, approachable and social.

And then she applies this concept to her website. (Now we have an affinity with blogging.) It is updated daily with suitable material gathered from her Facebook Group, plus more professional material about her business and what it offers. Here she goes into more detail about the services she provides, the products she uses, her weekly special offers, her chosen product or service of the month and the newest testimonials she has collected.

It is the daily updating of her website that causes it to firmly occupy its No 1 slot in Google, which confirms why the majority of her new customers find her through it. It is almost like she treats her website like a blog, which of course stimulates the search engines to regularly visit it to find out what’s new. Most websites aren’t visited for several weeks or even months, since they hardly ever change their content, but a dynamic website like this one would attract a lot of attention from spiders, hungry for new stuff to index. And they would have probably been boosted through links from her Facebook Group, which is also regularly crawled for the same reasons.

So this is why I recommend blogging for the same results. Blogs are easier to update than websites, due to the platform they are written in, and can create steady traffic back via links to your website. But it is the regularity of the updating, the relevance of the content, the succinct usage of popular keywords plus an understanding of the audience by producing material they want to read, that will really make a difference in the end.

How to create your Twitter badge (revised)

Written on Friday 15 April 2011 by Alice

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It’s been almost exactly a year since I wrote a post instructing you how to put a Twitter badge on your blog. Of course nothing stays the same, and Twitter has changed its make-up since, making the above post out of date.

So here is a revised version (and it looks like I’ll have to do the same for some of my other e-courses, too).

First go to your Twitter profile and click on your username at the top right corner to activate the drop-down menu: