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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.

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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.

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Not all of us are multi-taskers. As a woman I’m supposed to be able to multi-task, but in reality it’s not second nature to me. I am very good at concentrating on one thing really well, sometimes to the detriment of all that goes on around me! I can put all my effort into making that performance as perfect as I can, and hate it when I get distracted by external stimuli that break the spell and force me to think of something else.

In business this can be a good trait – especially for small enterprises. The world is huge, and competition can be fierce, so being a ‘jack of all trades’ is not necessarily a good thing. It is unwise to ‘spread yourself too thinly’, to dabble in many things and become master of none. OK, it’s certainly good to read widely and extensively, to expand your knowledge within your chosen field, but sometimes it’s preferable to focus your expertise towards a particular area.

My tip for a small business is to find a niche. Something that is required by your target market (customers), you fully understand all the problems associated with it and you have the best solution possible. Alternatively, your niche is very lucrative, so concentrating on that particular venture will being in a good return and raise you above the competition.

By focusing on a small area, you will be able to become a true expert within that subject. Don’t get sidetracked by attractive prospectives that may persuade you to stray from your chosen path, they will only dilute what you have to offer, and make your niche less understandable.

I know a particular florist that started by providing beautiful, sumptuous and exotic bouquets. If you wanted to send a floral gift that was different, and not just an ordinary bunch of flowers, they were the place to go. Unfortunately, they panicked with the extended recession, and started to sell other items. Now their shop offers all kinds of unrelated additions, from garden implements, trinkets, figurines, cards and even clothes. There is no resemblance to the little florist that began its life only a few years ago.

I have no idea if this tactic has paid off, but it has certainly made me think whether they still provided those extraordinary floral displays for which I first knew them. The confusion has probably put off some custom because nobody is quite sure what they really sell. The pavement outside used to be decorated with wonderful blooms and exciting plants, now their windows show strange and weird gifts, mannikins sporting floral dresses and not a flower in sight.

Work out exactly what your real niche is, and stick to it. Don’t think that you need to know or offer everything. In fact, by becoming a true expert in your field, with the help of your blog, of course, you will attract more people because they understand what you do. They will know exactly what to expect, they won’t become confused or disillusioned, and they will feel safe either approaching you or recommending you to someone else. And eventually you will become the ‘point of call’ for that particular niche, even over your competitors!

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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!

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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.

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Back in the old days when you commented on a blog post you wrote what you wanted to say and then filled in the details below about yourself before publishing it. Why did you bother to do this? Well, this information accompanied the comment and allowed any interested parties to click on your name (which was usually a link back to your website, if you had filled that part in) to find out more about you.

There is another good reason for this – it’s not just humans who clicked on those links. Spiders like comments as they see them as new material that can be indexed, so a busy blog that has lots of comments is usually placed much higher in the search engines than unpopular blogs. And of course these spiders are then happily crawling over the commentor’s website too…

Anyway, this Magic Moment is about the four ways you can register yourself before you publish your comment in a WordPress.com blog. Clever apps have been incorporated that allows you to choose whatever identity you would like to comment under.

The first one is as a guest. This is where you are allowed to put in your personal data how you want it to be:

You don’t need to enter in your website or blog details, but if you have one I recommend that you do, for the reasons stated at the beginning of this post.

The second option is for those who have a WordPress account. This one is the usual preference that I comment under. This account is recognised throughout the WordPress blogging world, and your gravatar automatically comes up to accompany your comment as an extra visual presence.

Once you’ve entered your WordPress username and password, your comment will be acknowledged as a WordPress user:

The third option is via your Twitter account. A lot of people might prefer this as they are usually always logged into Twitter so registering is easy.

Once you’ve filled in your details, you’ll be logged in as a Twitterer, and your name will be linked back to your Twitter profile:

The final option is via Facebook, and the same thing applies:

And once your Facebook details have been entered in and accepted, you’ll be commenting under your Facebook profile:

For each profile you comment under, the picture icon you use for that account will show as your gravatar. As I use the same one for all my accounts so there are no differences for me to demonstrate, but be aware that if you have a silly Facebook icon, do you really want that showing up next to your comment?

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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!

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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:

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The settings on a blog are usually ignored because either they have been forgotten, or the blogger doesn’t understand what and how important they are.

I always make a bee-line to change the settings as soon as I have created a blog. You don’t need to act with such urgency, but it is important not to neglect this aspect of a blog if you want to optimise the search engine response and regulate how your blog relates to its community.

This is the main settings page:

I have already made my changes from the default settings provided. They are, of course, what I would like and fit in with my perception of how I want my blog to work, and should not be set in stone as ‘the’ settings to have. You should be free to ‘play’ with your settings to see what works best for you.

Magic Moment #7 would like to show you what my settings are – purely as a guide:

The Site Title will show up on the very top of your internet browser you see this blog in. (In PCs it goes from the left, on Macs it is centered.) It is the most prominent title in the search engine listings of your blog, so is very important in SEO terms. It should consist of your blog’s title, if you have one.

The Tagline is your blog’s strapline, or a brief description of what your blog is about, or who you are or what your business is about. Don’t make it too long, and preferably memorable. It is usually placed beneath your site title in search engines listings.

How important is it to set the correct location of your blog? Well, the default is UTC+0 which doesn’t take into account the blog’s country or light-saving-time-changes and such like. If you have set up a RSS feed into your social media, this will prevent your posts from being delayed before they arrive in your Twitter stream, for example.

I am very pernickety when it comes to presenting dates. The British write our dates differently from the Americans (a phenomenon which created problems when I was dating freshly prepared food in my San Francisco breakfast bar job) and I like my days to go before my months. Therefore I have used the setting ‘l j F Y’ to create my preferred format. You can find out which formats are available through the explanatory link available.

Setting the time presentation is purely cosmetic. I didn’t need to change anything here. I also didn’t amend the day my week started and which language I used. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button when you’ve finished.

And there’s your gravatar to amend. Check out how to do this through this e-course ‘How to update personal profiles and upload gravatars’. Once done, your gravatar will represent you throughout the internet via your blog, so make sure it is large, clear and something you can live with without embarrassment!

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I had the extremely good fortune last week of having a meeting with Graham Jones, the Internet Pyschologist, to talk about my new blogging book for beginners and technophobes. He was very kind and thought the book had potential, since it was aimed at a niche that had been forgotten somewhat by the blogging world.

Focusing on the kind of reader I want to write for is important, as I need to compile a ‘profile’ of my readership so I can write specifically for them. Concentrating on one personality, in the form of a character, will help guide me through this ‘story’ of creating a blog, embellished with encouraging and reassuring explanations of the blogosphere in ordinary language, with the jargon thoroughly explained.

There is a lot of jargon in blogging, and many self-help books assume that potential bloggers already understand it, or are willing to adopt it without any questions. This I think is unfair for the uninitiated, the ‘technophobes’ I referred to earlier. My book’s niche are people who have heard about blogs, but balk at the sometimes incomprehensible new words that accompany it. They may need lots of reassurance that they are doing the right thing, clear and simple instructions in both a written and visual format, and ‘before and after’ examples to show they have performed everything correctly.

The ‘character’ that travels through the blog creation process needs to strike a chord with all my readers, so I will make them androgynous to not undermine or turn-off any potential reader. One of the subjects I discussed with Graham was the comparison of the genders that I might attract with this book. His response was a probable ratio of 1:2, ie one third men to two third women. I want to attract men who don’t understand about blogging, but are embarrassed to admit it – this book will provide a kindly source of information for them to understand blogging jargon and technical stuff and not lose face.

This book will also contain material that explains more than just the blog creation process. By setting it as a story, this character will explore all the major anxieties and hurdles blogging beginners experience, especially those who are not necessary au fait with the internet. And, of course, during the journey they will encounter problems that will prevent their progression, and this is where the Fairy Blog Mother™ comes in.

You really didn’t think the Fairy Blog Mother™ would not be included, did you? Just like all helpful guardians, cries of help will summon her to the scene, where she will wave her magic wand and produce the solution in a cloud of fairy dust! No, this isn’t going to be cheesy, and she won’t appear in every chapter (unless absolutely necessary), but I want to give the impression of altruistic helpfulness that only my alter ego can provide.

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