Once upon a time there was a graphic designer who wanted to promote her website on the net. She went onto Google and typed in something that brought up a list of interesting websites that all offered ways of doing this.
But one stood out amongst the rest. It was bright, vibrant and friendly, and above all, it didn’t look like a website, but somewhere that ‘talked’ to its visitors instead of preaching to them. It looked welcoming, the information it contained was accessible and readable, and there was a lot of it that seemed to go on forever.
The graphic designer started to read, and she learned loads! It was fascinating to her, she had never seen anything like this before. This different kind of website seemed to be giving her all the answers she needed, and it was all so easy to find!
Further scrutinsing offered a button that could be clicked on to receive more information from this website whenever it was published. This seemed too good to be true, and the graphic designer eagerly subscribed. Over the next few weeks she learned so much more, as she devoured the information sent to her inbox.
One of the things she learned was that she needed to have a blog. Having never heard of them, she greedily absorbed everything there was to know about blogs, and soon realised they were wonderful things. She learned that they were much easier to set up than websites, and having struggled over the past couple of months to create her existing website, the graphic designer wished she had known this beforehand.
Time passed as the graphic designer played with her newly created blog, and soon realised that there were other versions available that provided much better results, so she transferred over. After that she never looked back, and eventually abandoned her website as her business expanded into his new world of content management systems. Graphic design was given short shrift and used only as a by-product, as the doors opened into the world of blogging.
The internet yielded a huge quantity of information and instruction, and she learned about marketing via the internet. This was fascinating, as there was so much potential for creating an online business. This was to lead into further education in digital marketing that was to hold her in good stead, and the realisation that blogs had the power to become great websites without all the hassle other website design packages provided was a revelation. Why wasn’t everybody doing this? Surely this was the answer for communicating about businesses online?
So the Fairy Blog Mother was born, albeit in embryonic form. There was still a heck of a lot more to learn, especially if she was to present herself as blogging know-how. And this education is nowhere near its completion – and would be stupid to say that it was. Blogging within digital marketing is a continuously evolving subject, as of course the technology itself is constantly being redeveloped and improved. But we must all start somewhere, and so I am offering some of my knowledge to you for free over the next few months.
I’ve been thinking of the many reasons why we should have a blog, regardless of whether you’re a business or individual or whatever. So far I’ve come up with 62, but will probably add to that with more brainstorming. If you would like to share these with me, watch out for my promotional posts about how to sign up to this new event. I shall look forward to ‘seeing’ you on the other side.
Magic Moment: Variable comment logins
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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?