Design Your Marketing

Learn how to link in to LinkedIn

Alice — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:34:07 +0000

Here’s just a small visual e-course I quickly compiled to demonstrate how easy it is to submit articles into groups in LinkedIn:

http://www.designyourmarketing.co.uk/How to create submissions in the BinB LinkedIn group.pdf

Let me know if it helps to make it easier to contribute. The more activity there is in these groups, the more there is to read, the more promotion members can make, the more new material there is for the internet spiders, and the more interaction from members also contributes to search engine optimisation.

So how about it – go on, give it a go!

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Close your websites doors before someone gets in

Alice — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:19:42 +0000

On 23 July 2009 my website was hacked into.

The result was that some malware was put into the code of my theme of my website. This activated links to hundreds of pornographic sites whenever I uploaded new material.

Recently I have been quite busy uploading new pages about my blogging beginners self-help e-courses, so all my activities had been blasting off all this pornographic stuff left right and centre throughout the net.

I do have a wonderful brother who is a wizard in website programming, and he worked his magic behind the scenes, locating and removing the malware. Let’s just hope it doesn’t have secondary programming to reappear again later.

Meanwhile I have tried to submit my website for reconsideration by Google. I have contacted my server and have closed all my FTP access (which I will have to temporarily open every time I want to upload something). That was the back door that was wide open and allowed the hacker in.

So check all the portals of your website to make sure they are secure. Change all your passwords to everything regularly and use combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation to make them stronger.

Keep an eye out for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary with your website. This malware was totally invisible on my website, so it was the fact that I couldn’t see my theme that alerted me that something was wrong, but only after all the damage had been done.

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Want a Wordpress.com blog the easy way?

Alice — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:23:48 +0000

Hooray!

After months of promising, I have finally done it. I have created the first sixteen of my blogging e-courses on how to create a Wordpress.com blog the really easy way – using visual e-courses that show you, step by step, with screen-shots of each procedure, the simplest way to create a fully functional blog – and they’re now ready to buy at incredibly reasonable prices! Just go to my make a blog! page to find out more.

And that’s not all, I still have two more e-courses to create, and I will be dotting around free pdfs with relevant top tips, time-saving methods and inside knowledge nuggets of how to make your blog and its posts all that more successful.

So if you know any start-up businesses, people who haven’t got a blog yet and are scared about starting one, or those who already have a blog and want to find out more about maximising its potential, then send them to my make a blog! page.

Oh, and leave a comment! I would really value your thoughts, and any questions are more than welcome!

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After the muffin blog post was eaten…

Alice — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:04:17 +0000

I presented my muffin post idea to a group of 30 women, and was pleasantly surprised when they appeared to ‘get’ my idea.

Some interesting questions arose:

“If you don’t follow this recipe for creating blog posts, what happens?’

“Well, you get a misshapen, tasteless, half-baked mound in the middle of your baking tray, in other words, not a good post.”

“Lots of people might not know how to create posts properly, so are there lots of badly baked muffins around?”

“Of course, take a look at other blogs and see if they have all the ingredients in them. You’ll soon know which ones are baked perfectly.”

One woman came up to me afterwards and revealed she had started a blog, and now realised her posts were lacking in flavour. “Thanks for letting me know what tags are for, can I go back and put them in?”

“Yes, blog posts can be rebaked with the correct flavourings (tags or keywords), unlike real muffins, which cannot be ‘undone’. That’s the beauty of blogging, and not baking. I suppose you could crumble up your bland muffins and add flavourings to it for another dish, such as a rewritten post.”

What thoughts or questions do you have that arise from my muffin blog post?

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How is a blog post like a chocolate muffin?

Alice — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:30:47 +0000

Let’s bake some muffins (the American ones that resemble large cup cakes) and compare the process to writing a blog post.

First, gather together the necessary equipment and ingredients. You will need a bowl, a saucepan, cooking scales, a bar of chocolate, flour, butter and sugar, an egg, vanilla essence and chocolate drops, muffin cases, a baking tray, an oven, some hungry people, and a recipe book.

Your bowl represents your blog’s posting page. It’s empty, and needs the ingredients to be put in it to make your muffins. Likewise your edit post page needs some post material to be written into it.

The idea for your post is like deciding what flavour your muffins should be. It’s best to choose a subject that everybody will want to read, so we have chosen chocolate as this is usually a favourite. Melt your chocolate in a saucepan.

Now weigh out your flour, or the words of your post. This is the bulk of the final product. But other ingredients need to be added, as flour alone won’t make a muffin.

But before you add the flour to your bowl, you must cream together the butter and sugar. This mixture represents the headline or title of your post, as it needs to be done or thought of first. It can be hard work to create the correct consistency, but it will be worth it.

Add a beaten egg to the mixture, or check that the headline has become a suitable permalink or URL for your post, and doesn’t read just as a page number. The permalink is important for search engine optimisation, to allow the mixture to rise during cooking, so it is a good idea to get it right.

Now you enhance the flavour of your muffin mixture with vanilla essence and chocolate drops (which represents the tags or keywords of your post). These will transform your muffins into tasty double chocolate samples rather than just ordinary chocolate ones.

Now you fold the flour into the mixture, or write the words with all the elements included above. Remember to add the melted chocolate (or retain the relevance of your post), or your muffins won’t turn out as expected.

Then spoon the mixture into your muffin cases, so they retain their shape and cook better on the baking tray. This is the equivalent of allocating your post to its category or topic page.

Now you need to publish your post, or cook your muffins in the oven. Mmmm, wonderful chocolatety smells! Once the time is up, they should be ready to be devoured by hungry readers.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the baker’s shop. If you supply a baker’s shop to sell your muffins, more people who pass by or visit the shop will get a chance to buy and eat them. And if the shop provides a delivery service, regular customers will receive half a dozen as soon as they are baked. This is the equivalent of RSS feeding and subscribing your newly published posts.

And the last item is my recipe book, or blogging pages, where you can learn more about blogs and how to create them.

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To comment or not to comment, it’s all about interaction

Alice — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:00:43 +0000

One of the aspects of a blog is that it is interactive. This means readers are able to contribute to your blog if they have something to say. Blogging programmes automatically add an area after posts where readers can add their point of view. The ability to comment is also part of the phenomenon Web2.0, which is about interaction on the web.

So, what is special about blogs and commenting? Ordinary websites don’t have areas to put your point across, unless it’s a form to leave your details or send an email. Therefore what you have written is not automatically showed to you afterward for others to read, something that naturally occurs on a blog (unless the blog’s administrator wants to moderate your comment first, to make sure it isn’t spam).

But why should you comment on blogs? Apart from sharing your opinions, your comment may increase the value of the blog post, making it more interest to other readers. The author may also be inclined to respond, and starting a conversation – all adding to the entertainment factor.

Another thing to note, comments are viewed by the search engine spiders as new material, so the more interaction, the more the blog post goes up the search engines.

Comments can vary in content, as their authors can agree or disagree with the topic of the post. As long as you continue to be polite and forthcoming, and your contribution is relevant and resourceful, any comment is good. Sometimes comments lead onto other blog posts, especially if backed up by links. As spiders thrive on links, there are opportunities for comment authors to leave their details.

How do you induce a comment? Simply ask for one, as sometimes it won’t occur to the reader to leave one otherwise. Positioning a question at the bottom of your post may also encourage a response, as well as controversial subject matter. Those who comment are usually used to interaction on the net, and are likely to be avid social networkers, but anything that stimulates a reader to take action is advantageous.

Why is it good to comment? If you want to find your way in your chosen field, visit as many relevant blogs and leave a comment where you can. Then you will begin to get noticed by other bloggers and blog readers, and commenting will also enable you to link back to your blog or website, thus increasing your visitor rate. If you get a name for yourself by leaving good quality comments, visitors are more likely to visit to read your articles, subscribe to your blog and even leave comments themselves.

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RSS simply explained

Alice — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:00:26 +0000

When I asked for feedback on what people wanted to know about blogs and blogging, many of them wanted to know about RSS. The main question being what is RSS?

So here is an explanation of those who do not know:

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is easily recognisable through the orange square icon found at the top of most blogs’ sidebars.

It is like a subscription service, enabling your followers to receive any new material you’ve written as soon as it’s published. It saves you time and makes it easy for you to keep up with new stuff without having to search all your favourite blogs for it.

Think of it like subscribing to a magazine: the new post (or message) gets delivered straight to you, either via email into your in-box, or into search engine readers if you’ve subscribed via that method.

A search engine reader provides pages with links to newly available posts, or individual ‘cookies’ on the search engine homepage which lists the last three posts of that blog through headline links.

Apart from allowing your followers to keep track of your new material, RSS also has other uses, mainly through social media.

When you publish a new blog post, it can be ‘fed’ into your social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This means that each new message appears as a link automatically in these sites. The RSS feed delivers your new content in this format for your followers to read.

In Facebook the whole post is published in the Notes pages, and your Homepage or Status page shows the headline link (known as a permalink) with perhaps the first few lines of the post as a taster.

In Twitter your post is listed as the title and the first few words, followed by a tinyurl (or reduced link) to the blog post. As a Twitter message uses only 140 characters, there will not be room for the whole permalink, so various methods are used to shorten it.

RSS is important if you wish to increase your readership or encourage more interest from search engines. It is a piece of software that encourages the search engine spiders to follow your blog, and automatically spreads your news throughout the web. Without it your blog would appear lifeless as only those who are invited would get a chance to read it, and only if they bothered to visit it regularly. RSS automatically delivers your messages without effort, saves time and encourages a new readership, especially through social media.

If you want to find out how to include RSS into your blog, I have written a blogging visual e-course on the subject, called “Setting up a RSS feed = how to set up RSS feed so others can follow your blog posts”. You can view it from my blogging pages, and will be available to buy, along with the other e-courses, from September, so watch this space!

Alice Elliott of Design Your Marketing has created a series of visual e-courses to help you set up and maintain a blog from WordPress.com. They are designed to take you through the blogging journey either completely from the beginning, or to allow you to dip into those areas you are unsure of, or would like to know more. They should be ready to purchase from September 2009.

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How are blogging and teeth similar?

Alice — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:30:36 +0000

Blogging as like flossing your teeth, you need do it fairly regularly to maintain your oral hygiene (or marketing awareness). It doesn’t need to be done everyday like brushing your teeth (or working on your marketing strategy), but you need to keep it up if you want a nice smile (or well marketed business).

Nobody likes looking at yellow teeth (neglected blog) or being subjected to bad breath (badly composed posts). Fluoride in your toothpaste (sharing your expertise) will encourage a broad smile (widely promoting your business) which will attract friends (more customers).

Your body, like your blog, needs good nutrition (interesting and valuable content) to result in a healthy disposition (frequently read blog). And regular exercise (internet research) will help you find suitable material, as both stimulate the brain!

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What is the difference between an article and a blog post?

Alice — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:30:06 +0000

An article is a lengthy piece of writing, written in an expert’s point of view, aimed at explaining a topic in great detail. A blog post is a shorter piece of writing, usually in a ‘conversational’ style, aimed at updating or educating your readers, or to spark ideas and interest in your business.

Articles are produced to promote the author’s expertise and prowess at writing and research, hence why they are long. A blog post should take one subject and explain it succinctly within a few short paragraphs, written from multiple view-points to gain the comprehension of the reader.

Articles can vary in length, and even though they are online, are designed to be printed out for leisurely reading. Blog posts are meant to be read immediately. The subject should be introduced within the headline and first sentence, and the concept within the first paragraph. As most blog readers only read the first 25% of a post, or spend an average of 96 seconds, getting the jist across at the very beginning is important to achieve your post being read in full.

Twitter has minimalised this even further (hence why it’s called micro-blogging). There are just 140 characters to get your point across and capture your reader’s interest, but you do have the advantage of interaction: a tinyurl link can be added to direct the reader to a blog post or article for further reading.

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New blogging visual e-course coming together!

Alice — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 16:35:55 +0000

It’s finally happening! I’ve written 17 of my blogging visual e-courses so far to help you create a successful blog. And I’ve also written an 18th one to add as a prize to all those who sign up to my blogging newsletter (go to my blogging pages to sign up). It’s all about how links are beneficial to blogging, and contains information you cannot fail to miss out on. Oh, and I’ve got at least two more e-courses to write! It’s all go at the moment, in spite of it being the summer holidays, so watch this space for more once I’ve sorted everything out.

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