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Banishing blogging myths: it’s too technical

Posted on Thursday 25 April 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

A lot of people don’t start a blog because they see it as something ‘techie’. The other day I spoke to an up and coming young chef who was cooking fabulous food. She had taken wonderful pictures of her culinary creations and she was doing the right thing by posting them onto her Facebook page. This proved she was used to social media and understood the need to publicise her wares.

I told her that because she was happily posting onto Facebook, this didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same in a blog. But the very word ‘blog’ immediately put her defence shields up; it was technical, it commanded website knowledge, it was totally the unknown… and that was the crux of the problem, she didn’t know or understand anything about blogs.

Further questioning quickly established it hadn’t taken her long to get to know Facebook so that she felt easy about popping in to upload a picture or make a comment about her latest supper party she had hosted or tell her friends about the scrumptious wedding cake she had just delivered to the bride’s family.

So I explained to her this is exactly the same with a blog. They are just as user-friendly as the other social networking sites, especially WordPress, which has been refined and simplified over the years to make it as easy as writing in Word. The majority of us use Word almost every day, it is a commonly used platform we all understand, so it stands to reason a content management system like a blog should be made just as easy to use.

I write a nature post every day as part of my blogathon. I go in, write the post and then I’m out again within 15 minutes (these posts are never very long). WordPress has made it as easy as possible to write, edit, upload and compose posts by eliminating all the difficult technical stuff, by creating intuitive methods of achieving what you need to do, placing the methods and buttons required in easy to find places, and taking all the hassle away.

All the hard work has been done behind the scenes so you don’t have to worry about the technical stuff. All you need to do is to click on the appropriate button and everything is done for you! No technicalities required whatsoever! Couldn’t be easier!

I specialise in teaching non-technical people how to create a blog and regularly post in it. I understand that some people are confused by the jargon, bemused by the editing fields, scared to press a button in case it blows the computer up, frightened to go into the ‘unknown’ in this weird and wonderful blog.

But once they have a friendly, helpful, empathetic person by their side helping them with each function and explaining each transaction, they soon pick it up and are blogging away like anything. Quite a few start to predict what comes next and it is me that has to run to keep up with them! That’s brilliant, because I have given them the confidence to try things out for themselves, and that’s what my blogging teaching is all about!

Filed Under: Blogging education, blogging encouragement, Blogging help, blogs and blogging, non-jargon

Let’s get more people blogging!

Posted on Wednesday 24 April 2013 by Alice • 0 Comments

I came across a shocking statistic: only 13% of businesses have a blog!

After having a good think about this, I came to the conclusion that probably it’s because not many SME owners are aware of how beneficial blogging is for their business. Even if they have heard about blogs (as they are finally starting to be recognised as a business resource), they can’t see how a blog would work within their business, understand its relationship with social media, or even for digital marketing campaigns.

And then there is the rise of content marketing over SEO, for which a blog is a perfect medium for original writing and conversational communications with the potential customer base. Using a simple CMS (content management system) to explain, express and exchange ideas with the public so that they get a chance to understand a business better, is a vital part of customer relationship management.

A blog should be used as a hub of any social media campaign or activity. It is where the beef of your message is contained. The activity on social media is limited in its content, so this should be used to direct interested parties back to the blog with attractive headlines and relevant links. Structure messages on social media based on the call to action back to the blog, where much more information can be delivered to them for better comprehension, suitable persuasive content and further links back to the website where the business transaction can take place.

Blogs are actually very easy to set up. They don’t require any technical knowledge, and many are designed to be similar to other word processing platforms using familiar icons, etc. In fact if you can cope with updating your Facebook profile or page on a regular basis, this is no different to creating and maintaining a blog, as the system and reasons are the same. And if you are thinking why bother creating a blog as well as using Facebook, then consider the different audiences that use these platforms, and spreading a marketing message around the web will increase the exposure of it further.

For those who are not used to it on a daily basis, technology can be quite daunting until it is properly learned. And even then that process is not easy, as many people who technical proficients are unable to explain what they do without peppering their language with jargon and other confusing vocabulary. In fact, training and explaining about blogs in a way that anybody can understand does require some specialist knowledge, namely having been on the receiving end and experienced the difficulties each student is going through. Blogging jargon is mostly of American origin, so translating it into English and then relating it to everyday circumstances or the interests of the learner certainly helps in understanding and retaining that newly-founded knowledge.

Fairy Blog Mother aims to become one of the best WordPress trainers and tutor providers available for businesses and individuals. By being able to explain and teach blogging in a proficient and easily understandable way, blogging use will be increased and maximised to its full potential. There is so much a blog can do for a business, as long as it is totally and appropriately understood, appreciated and implemented.

Filed Under: Blogging education, blogging encouragement, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, non-jargon

Magic Moment: Where does your blog traffic come from?

Posted on Monday 23 July 2012 by Alice • 1 Comment

Click above to ask me a question

It’s always a good idea to know where your blog traffic is coming from, whether your last flurry of social media activity resulted in lots of clicks, or whether that link you placed on a particular website has brought in a few new visitors.

This Magic Moment begins the investigation of this section in Google Analytics that shows how your visitors have accessed your blog. If you click on Traffic Sources > Overview in the left sidebar, you will see this page:

But it is this pie-chart that shows the most interesting information:

Over 70% found my blog through the search engines. This means they had asked a question or used particular keywords that were directed to my blog.

Now I could get quite excited about this, as it does lend the idea as to which search keywords they used, and perhaps I could write some more posts using those keywords to get more traffic. We shall see what the real story is later in another Magic Moment, and how I could encourage these visitors to use my blog further.

Over 11% of traffic comes from referrals. I would like this to become a lot more in the future, so I will investigate which referral sites have been used and how or whether I can explore more effective use of them to increase more focused traffic back to my blog.

17% direct traffic shows that people know my blog’s URL or at least its name, and by typing it in have successfully gained access to my blog.

And finally campaigns – this is interesting, as I have yet to set up any proper campaigns, so those five visits are very intriguing!

So now I will quickly glance at the first 10 referral sites that sent traffic to my blog (click on Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals to access this page):

I will go into more detail in another Magic Moment, as there is a lot to explore here, but I want to show you the top 10 referral sites I am currently getting:

The top one, t.co, is Twitter. I am presuming this amount of traffic has resulted from the use of the plugin ‘Tweet Old Post’ that automatically sends out past posts at irregular intervals throughout the day, which helps to keep my blog alive for those who are on Twitter at that moment. Ideally I should be investigating into more activity on Twitter, both automated and spontaneous, to generate some more traffic back to my blog.

LinkedIn and Facebook are also doing quite well, and there is certainly much more I could do on these social media platforms to increase traffic (part of my marketing plan that begins in the autumn).

The others trickle in, and unless you want to do a concerted effort in a particular referral site, or through a special tinyurl associated with a social media platform such as bit.ly or su.pr, it’s probably just worth noting which ones provide how many each month, and raise an eyebrow if necessary at any unusual ones that pop up, especially when viewing the extended list.

More demystifying in the next set of Magic Moments to come…

Filed Under: Blogging education, blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

How many visitors do you get to your blog?

Posted on Tuesday 10 July 2012 by Alice • 1 Comment

Click my logo to ask me a question!

These are permanent questions on every blogger’s mind: how many visitors do I get to my blog? And what kind of visitors are they? Are they really interested in what I have to say, or have they got there by accident?

And how about these questions: how much traffic did my last tweet bring in? Was it worth doing that concerted effort on Facebook? Did posting on that LinkedIn group make any difference?

And then there are these: which keywords stimulate more traffic? Which subject matter gets more attention, and why? Did changing that headline really increase my ratings?

If you have a WordPress.org blog, then ideally you should have installed a Google Analytics plugin. There are many to choose from, and they all should make the process of adding your blog as simple as possible.

Gone are the days when you needed to add the special code in exactly the right place in your website’s header code, and on every page you wanted tracked and recorded. Now all you need is a Google Account, and once you’ve registered your blog or website, just copy the UA-code allocated to it.

Paste this into the plugin’s setting pages, save and wait for your stats to start rolling in. It usually takes about a day to get any results, and longer if they are to become meaningful.

The next set of Magic Moments will show you how to set up Google Analytics on your blog (note this is only for the WordPress.org ones) and what you should be looking out for in the stats. I shall be using my own, which will be very embarrassing, as they aren’t as good as they should be, so I shall be exploring what I need to do to improve my situation at the same time.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, increasing business visibility, marketing methods, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

Did lack of compliance cause Cookie Law relaxation?

Posted on Monday 28 May 2012 by Alice • 2 Comments

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Did you go mad last week trying to get ready for the new EU Cookie Laws when their enforcement deadline expired on Saturday?

I certainly did – in a mad rush on Friday evening. I’ve uploaded an appropriate Cookie Consent plugin (causing more cookies to be attributed to it!) and added a Cookie Compliant Disclaimer in my sidebar.

But it seems all to no avail, as hardly any websites have risen to the occasion. This isn’t only due to apathy and confusion, but perhaps to defiance, as these laws are totally inappropriate for any decent website that wants to make an honest living.

So I wasn’t surprised when, lo and behold, the powers that be have realised the situation and given up a last-minute compromise – albeit still a bit woolly. According to the Guardian and (more carefully) the BBC News on Sunday, the wording has been changed so website visitors will provide a valid “implied consent” if they continue to use the website, especially if there is no intrusive pop-up demanding their “informed consent”.

As you see, it still isn’t very clear, so I’m keeping my cookie consent pop-up and sidebar disclaimer for a while, even if it does interfere with my Google Analytics statistics. Let’s hope the Cookie Law Enforcers either see sense very soon, or extend their compromise to include all non-spam related cookies so we can get on with our lives as before.

One good thing has come from this law, I’m not bombarded with annoying advertising when I update my Facebook profile and page – such a nice relief.

And if anyone wants or needs help with their Cookie Law compliance, you only need to ask the Fairy Blog Mother (by clicking on her logo to send an email) – as that’s what she’s there for!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs

You need to share to get more traffic

Posted on Wednesday 31 August 2011 by Alice • 2 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

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!

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

Magic Moment: Variable comment logins

Posted on Friday 26 August 2011 by Alice • 2 Comments

Click my logo to ask me a question!

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?

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, other social media

How to humanise your business through social media

Posted on Friday 22 July 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

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One of the changes that digital marketing is making on businesses in the second decade of the 21st century is enabling them to emphasise their human element. After all, at the end of the day, it’s important to remember that people buy from people, and not necessarily from corporations or even brands.

Therefore businesses should not lose sight of the people who are an integral part of the organisation, eg the stakeholders (in the broadest sense), which includes the owners, staff, customers, suppliers, media and maybe more, depending on the size and nature of the business.

By promoting this ‘people power’ through social media, which includes blogging, it’s important to remember the communication factors that have created this social revolution. Social media is ‘social’, it thrives in conversations, comments, feedback, real-time responses, immediate interaction with the people who matter: past, present and prospective customers.

Therefore it’s imperative that customers realise there is a human element behind the scenes. Real twitterers who respond to tweets about their business, ask a question or present a statement that is relevant to the organisation. Real bloggers who respond to comments and feedback as soon as they are posted, or write a relevant and value added post to answer a scenario brought up yesterday, or even hours ago.

We live in a world of ‘now’, real-time slipping through out fingers, yesterday’s news that actually happened only minutes ago, culturing a mentality of immediate responses, lack of patience and prompt reactions. It requires real people to adapt to these stimulae, react and respond to the matter at hand – and most important of all, to provide the ‘human’ side that determines them from robots and technology.

Only humans can gossip, taunt, laugh, joke, ask pertinent questions, quip, create puns, offer on the spot advice, commiserate, empathise, understand, comprehend, respond effectively to difficult questions, see a point of view, make us laugh, go out of their way to find the answer – and much more.

So don’t be embarrassed to be ‘human’ when you write your posts, send your tweets and respond to a Facebook tag. This doesn’t mean losing your cool or revealing anything unsuitable about yourself (unless it’s relevant), but it does mean talking about your mistakes as much as your successes, facing your foibles as much as promoting your expertise, telling a story as well as relating a case study, expressing happiness as well as reporting business news.

And the more your customers sense how ordinary your business is, not just a faceless corporation with oversea call centres and uninterested managers who only tow the party line, the more likely they feel they could get real value, good customer service and a real feel of ‘completeness’ when buying from you.

Filed Under: marketing methods, online marketing

Sharing is easy on WordPress.com

Posted on Wednesday 20 July 2011 by Alice • 0 Comments

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In the past it was always a bit of a hassle to sort out how to connect, or feed (the technical term), your blog to your social media profiles. It required creating a RSS URL and going to external application websites to enter your details of your blog, so that your posts would be published simultaneously in your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn account or whatever.

But not any more! Sharing has become so much easier in the new WordPress.com version, as now they do all the processes for you! And they’ve also improved on their sharing buttons as well, methods of encouraging your readers to share your post on their social media profiles, thus increasing the exposure of your posts to a larger audience.

Let’s start with the ability to share your post on your social media profiles. First, go to your Dashboard (usually through YourBlogURL/wp-login.php and entering your username and password):

Settings > Sharing

Look for ‘Settings’ in the left hand sidebar, and click on ‘Sharing’, to go to the Sharing Settings page below:

Here you can see where you can sort out how to publicise your posts and where to regulate which sharing buttons you need.

Let’s set up publicising your posts on Twitter:

Make sure you are already logged into your Twitter account on your computer, or that your computer remembers your Twitter account by default.

Then click on the ‘Connect to Twitter’ link under the Twitter logo:

Here we go through the process of authorising the connection between your WordPress.com account and your Twitter account:

Here you can read all the things this application will allow you to do – pretty impressive, eh?

Click on ‘Authorize App’:

Right, now you’re connected to Twitter, and whenever you publish a post, it will be automatically posted on your Twitter stream. I told you it was easy! Next time after you’ve published, go check the tweet that has been created for you, and know that your post has a better chance of being read by a lot more people than before.

Do the same thing with the other social networking profile apps that you have accounts with – enjoy!

Now to sort out your sharing buttons that will appear after your posts and at the bottom of your pages. Span further down the Sharing Settings page to find the ‘Share Button’ section:

After you’ve decided which social sharing buttons you would like, drag them down into the space below:

There is also the option of dragging them into the collective share button box, where all the services will be stored behind a multi-purpose sharing button, if you want this facility to be more tidy on your blog.

After you’ve finished selecting and dragging your share buttons, it will look like this:

Decide to keep the like button box ticked if you want your readers to ‘like’ your post; you will be notified via email when somebody does!

The next stage allows you to play with the presentation of your buttons. It might be a good idea to have the buttons opening up in a new or different window when clicked on, so change the settings to ‘New Window’ from the drop down menu.

You can also decide where (which posts, pages or index pages) you want your buttons to be displayed, by selecting from the options available from the final drop down menu.

And don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Now go and have a look at a post you have written to see the effect:

And if you’re not happy, go back to the Share Settings page to change everything to how you want it to be; it’s always easy to rearrange WordPress.com to perfect your blog!

Filed Under: Blogging help, blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs

When is the best time to blog?

Posted on Friday 22 April 2011 by Alice • 1 Comment

Fairy Blog Mother

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.

Filed Under: blogs and blogging, Free Wordpress blogs, increasing business visibility, Self-hosted Wordpress blogs, social networking

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