Archives for Blogging category
On Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking on an online writing panel with Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, Thursday Bram and Deborah Ager facilitated by Kristen King. All are fantastic ladies and leaders in their fields. The panel was part of the 30th annual American Independent Writers conference.
While a lot of the discussion revolved around transitioning from print to electronic writing, there was also much talk about the legitimacy of blogging and citizen journalism. Attendees asked about how to generate revenue from blogging and how low blogging pay rates compare with larger print pay rates. Here are a few takeaways:
- Writers blog for many different reasons like marketing another business, to raise their rep as an expert in their field or to drive traffic to third party revenue services (like AdSense).
- While pay rate per post may be low, if you can turn over many posts in an hour, the per hour pay rate actually increases.
- Pay rates for print jobs are dropping. In the future, blogging and print pay rates may be equal.
Here are other great wrap-ups of the event. Many thanks to Kristen King for having me!
Whitney and I attended the second annual BlogPotomac bloggers conference on Friday at the State Theater. Hosted by Geoff Livingston and a variety of wonderful sponsors and volunteers, I thought that the presenters, topics and overall format were relevant and timely – they really got to the heart of social media challenges and benefits. I had initially bought my ticket so I could see Ford’s sole social media powerhouse, Scott Monty speak about how he put a new coat of paint on Ford’s brand by actually listening to its customers. (I also got to hang with Scott and Pam & Frank Martin – Pam is in the photo with me – during the lunch break!) But I was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtfulness and quality of the other speakers as well. Topics ranged from utilizing blogging for political activism to the pros/cons of personal branding. Any proceed from the event were donated to DC Central Kitchen, a nonprofit who helps train homeless people in the culinary arts. To date, they have trained over 700 folks with culinary skills.
Kudos to Geoff and team for pulling off such an outstanding event. Can’t wait for October!
Here are a few takeaways from the event:
- Who should own social media? Orgs own their own efforts.
- Engage employees who “get” the mechanics of social media; but these people aren’t your strategists, but they will get things done.
- Understand the resources that you will need to be successful in social media (ex. Southwest Airlines had to hire 2 new full-time people just to moderate comments.)
- Hashtags (ex. #blogpotomac) are incredibly important for following important conversations.
- Folks who blog for orgs or corps – learn to speak with your own voice, not your directors (sometimes this is difficult to overcome). Ask if the single “voice” is speaking to everyone – investors, staff, customers, constituents, etc.
- Personal brands are not created. They are earned.
- Scott Monty stated that he was “not online to sell cars. He is online to build reputation.”
- Crisis is the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive.
- Brands aren’t only built around just a name but larger, the reputation.
- The name is just a label. Never let your personal brand eclipse the greater goal of your company.
- Despite shiny tools, strategy is still key!
There are also a ton of great wrap-ups out there. Check it out.:
I have the distinct pleasure of speaking at the American Independent Writers conference today and I’m super psyched. AIW is truly one of my favorite groups to present to. I spoke on a panel last year to this great group of writers on the topic of writing for online audiences and will be speaking on the topic of finding your voice today.
When you start to write, particularly when blogging, its important to think about the tone of your writing. When I started blogging, I considered my audience which was (and still is) professionals who want to learn more about using social media within their business or organization. Prior to blogging, my writing background consisted primarily of technical writing and documentation. So my writing started out very formal and corporate, sadly, almost “white paper-ish” and eventually I was bored with my own writing.
Blogging should be personal and genuine. And even if you are blogging about business tips or company news, it should come from the heart.
Sick of my own corporate blather, I changed my tone. I started to write more like myself. Interestingly, I started writing exactly the way that I speak and it worked for me…and more importantly for my readers. I found that the more that I injected my own opinions, talked about my own experiences and connected with my audience, the more readers I attracted and the quality of the conversation improved.
Some of us have, what I will call “BIG” personalities. And the challenge for me became balancing and sometimes filtering my own personality a bit. While my sarcastic wit and strong opinions work sometimes, they don’t work all of the time. So, to date, I do temper my writing just a bit. But I recently had a great conversation with a branding colleague who encouraged me to put more of my personality out there, so you may start to see more of “me” shortly.
One note on “putting yourself out there”. If you are very opinionated, its likely that there are folks out there who don’t share your opinion and want to tell you about it. I wrote a helpful post a few weeks ago about dealing with negative comments that might be helpful.
If you write for a corporate entity or organization and are more constrained to towing the “company line”, I would still suggest trying to find your own voice. And more importantly, avoid using the sole voice of the director. For some of you this will be a challenge to overcome, but with some frank discussions with upper management and marketing, you may be able to make your case. Ask if this single “voice” of the company is speaking to everyone – investors, staff, customers, constituents. Your colleagues may find that the tone is too corporate and is not truly connecting with your audience. Consider encouraging multiple staffers to blog. Everyone’s voice is different and while you may not connect with a customer, someone else might.
Most importantly, experiment and see what works for you. Don’t rush it – take baby steps. Eventually you will find your true online voice.
This has come up recently not only with clients, but with prospective social media adopters. How do I handle negative commentary?
I can admit that I am a hot head (I blame it on the red hair) and while I understand that social media marketing is a two-way street, negative feedback (or even adversarial comments) tend to get my goat. My husband tells me to shake it off, but negative conversations stick with me. My first suggestion to you is….don’t be me.
It’s important to remember that everyone has an opinion and some are not articulated as well as others. Don’t let conflicting comments get to you and definitely don’t take it personally. Insulting comments are written to provoke a response. I typically post them then ignore them. Don’t give a jerk the satisfaction of a response. Comments that are simply a different opinion than yours warrant a response. Here’s what I like to do:
Thank them for their comment. No matter what, this person took the time to read your post and offer an opinion and they should be thanked. Plus, it somewhat defuses the situation.
Offer up some info to support your view. Some people might find this defensive, but if there are studies to support what you’ve said, why not offer them?
Stick to the facts. Don’t get emotional or take the comment personally. Just stick to the facts.
Have a plan. It’s always good to have a plan for spin control. The day will come when you say something that provokes a response from others. So, develop a plan of action for when this happens and execute it when necessary. It’s better to know how you are going to handle differing comments before you need to.
By having a quick plan to handle opposing viewpoints and issues, it’s easier and much less emotional and stressful to respond if/when it happens.
I think that one of the best, easiest ways to promote your blog is through feeds into social media properites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. While there might be a magical tool that links all of these mediums together, I’ve yet to find it. So here is my step-by-step process for posting your blog posts to almost all of your profiles. I will preface this by letting you know that I use WordPress so all of my techniques are based on WordPress.org.
Feed into Twitter - Use the WordPress Twitter Tools plugin to auto-post your blog post to your Twitter profile upon publication.
Feed into Facebook – There are two ways that I like to auto-post to Facebook.
1) By using the Twitter app in Facebook to feed your Twitter posts into your Facebook status bar, your blog posts will be posted to your Facebook profile automatically.
2) You can also use NetworkedBlogs to set-up a profile for your blog on Facebook. This gives you addtional exposure in general and feeds your blog posts into your activity timeline.
Feed into LinkedIn – LinkedIn recently launched a series of web apps that enable additional functionality for your LinkedIn profile. I use the WordPress app to feed my blog posts into my LinkedIn profile automatically. There is also an app called BlogLink that enables feeds for other blogs.
Feed into your Website - By using Feedburner, it’s easy to feed your blog posts into any HTML page. Simply sign-up for an account, enter your blog URL, configure your settings and copy/paste the generated code into your web page.
While there are literally thousands of social media tools, the feeds above should give you an starting point for effortlessly promoting your blog to your readers.
With all the talk of cutting back and going green – one would think media and advertisement would be out the window. While printed materials and high intensity ad campaigns might be slowing, more businesses are turning to the web – especially blogs – as a vehicle for their messages. What you may NOT know is how powerful a tool blogging software has become – it’s not just for blogs anymore!
I work in WordPress, and I can‘t say enough about how great it is. Below are tips and ideas that use WordPress, as well as reasons you should have a copy of this powerful platform.
- Increase Visibility for Little to No Cost! WordPress, for some reason, is more easily searched by search engine spiders than your standard sites… with less effort! For some reason, I’ve found blogs posted on the WordPress.com site returned slightly better search engine visibility.
- Brilliant Templates for Newbies and Non-Designers (I spend much of my time at smashingmagazine.com – search “WordPress templates”), while being extreme flexibility for expert programmers and designers. This flexibility makes it available to users everywhere, no matter what their expertise!
- Fast, Cheap and Easy! There are two ways you can set up a WordPress account.
- If you create an account at WordPress.com, you can set up a blog on the WordPress domain. With this option, you can choose plugins and templates to ‘customize’ your site – but only ones that are hosted on the .com site. Don’t worry – there are PLENTY! This takes less than an hour to set up. If you are savvier, you can experiment with custom images and CSS editing. – and all this is FREE!
- If you would like to host your own WordPress account, either on a new site or your existing domain, you will need to download the latest version of WordPress, unzip it, and uploaded it to your site. Most hosting providers now have a “blog install” option on their site which will do this for you. Software is FREE – install is usually FREE. All you need is a URL and a hosting package.
- Ability to Change Your Look. WordPress allows you to store themes, which can be used and changed in seconds. WordPress pages are styled using CSS, which is a lightweight and simple method of style web languages. Imagine the possibilities! You could have a new look every season, without having to touch the actual content of your site!
- WordPress as a Website – No, Really! Wordpress users have come such a long way; you no longer have to sacrifice look or functionality in your site. You can almost match a site that took months to build with a Wordpress site that was created in as little as one day. The WordPress community offers a wealth of plugins, with abilities to add features only the most robust websites used a few years before. You want bells and whistles? You got it! And, like styling, they can be installed and removed in seconds. And most are FREE!
The Bottom Line: By using WordPress to build and manage a website, the overall cost is WAY LESS than a custom site, with MORE BELLS AND WHISTLES and GREATER USABILITY in the back end, giving the domain owner more control than ever before – for much less money.
Sarah Chamberlain is a graphic and web designer. Currently she works with 360jmg, a branding firm in Washington, DC, at which she recently started a Green Design Practice Group. Catch her Green Design Blog on Tuesdays. Find her on Twitter at @Factory43 or shoot her an email at sarahchamberlain@360jmg.com.
To wrap up WordPress week, I wanted to briefly cover two topics – moving your existing blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and upgrading your WordPress.org blog.
Transferring Data from WordPress.com to WordPress.org
It is actually very easy to move your blog data from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress.org environment.
- First, follow the instructions to set-up your WordPress.org blog on your server.
- Go to WordPress.com and login to your blog.
- Go to the “Tools” tab and select “Export”.
- Unless you want to restrict any content, click “Download Export File” and save the XML file to your local drive. This will export all of your posts, comments, tags, etc.
- Log out of WordPress.com.
- Login to your self-hosted blog.
- Go to the “Tools” tab and select “Import”.
- If you are importing the XML file you just created, choose “WordPress”. If you are importing data from another blog platform, choose that platform.
- Browse your hard drive for the XML file you created. Click “Upload File and Import”.
See – easy as pie.
Upgrading WordPress
There are very specific directions for upgrading your version of WordPress. I was very nervous about upgrading (what if I lost all of my content?). But I followed the directions and had no problems. I can’t stress how important it is to login to MyPHPAdmin and backup a copy of your database just in case. That way if something hinky does happen, you still have all of your data. There is a “Three Step Upgrade” and “More Detailed Instructions“. I followed the detailed instructions just to be on the safe side.
I hope that you’ve found my posts helpful and that I have demystified WordPress a little. I think it’s a fantastic platform for both blogging and as a simple CMS. If you have any questions about WordPress don’t hesitate to give me a holler!
So we’ve talked about how to choose your blog, install it and make it pretty. Today, we’ll dig into how to make it sparkle. Having an attractive blog with compelling content is the battle, now win the war with some thoughtful choices in functional plugins.
Plugins are mini-applications that enable you to quickly and easily add functionality to your WordPress blog. You can add things like calendars, statistical tracking, search, Flickr feeds, Twitter feeds, etc.
Installing plugins is very similar to installing themes. They are just uploaded into a different directory.
- Find the plugins that you want and download them to your local drive. Themes are typically pre-packaged as a zip file.
- Unzip the file.
- Connect to your web server via the FTP connection that you set-up when you installed WordPress.
- Navigate to the folder www\wp-content\plugins on the web server.
- Upload the entire unzipped theme folder to this directory on the web server.
- Login to WordPress. Click “Plugins”. You should see the available plugins within this window.
- Click the “Activate” link to activate the plugins that you want to use.
- If you don’t like a plugin, you can always deactivate it later.
- Plugins should come with instructions for configuring the settings. Be sure to consult these to set-up your plugins correctly.
- Some plugins can also be viewed as “widgets” in the sidebar of your blog pages. To use your widgets, login to WordPress and click “Appearance” then “Widgets”. Choose the sidebar that you want to maintain from the drop-down and then drag and drop the widgets to the area on the right. Once you save, you should see them appear on your live blog.
There are thousands of cool plugins to choose from. While you don’t want to add them all, I have a selection that I always include as a basis for all blogs that I install. Here’s my list. Feel free to add to it.
- StatPress and Google Analytics – I use both of these plugins to help me track my traffic statistics. I like StatPress because I can see a snapshot of my traffic on the fly. Google Analytics gives me more detailed stats. Google Analyticator enables the addition of the GA JavaScript code to your blog posts.
- Twitter Tools – This handy tools allows you to auto-post your blog posts to your Twitter account. It also enables you to feed your Twitter posts into your blog sidebar.
- Broken Link Checker – Allows you to quickly check for broken links within blog posts and maintain them.
- All-in-One SEO Pack - Enables you to easily optimize your blog posts for search engine optimization.
- Google XML Sitemaps – Creates a dynamic sitemap that is easily indexed by Google and other search engines.
- No Self Pings – Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own website.
- ShareThis – There are many social bookmarking plugins available. I prefer ShareThis as it gives the reader the option to post to many different communities.
- wp-cache – Quick caching application that makes your blog faster and more responsive.
Here are a few other plugins that you might find handy, although I don’t think they are necessary for an effective blog.
Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up the week with moving from a WordPress.com blog to WordPress.org and upgrading!
WordPress Themes
Besides its functionality and ease of use, I really like how easy it is to add and play around with WordPress themes. Essentially, WordPress enables you to make your blog look however you like. You can use free, pre-programmed themes. You can hire someone to create a theme. You can skin WordPress with your own website’s design. It’s really flexible and the free themes are actually pretty professional. My main challenge is not spending hours and hours trying out different themes. It’s like trying on new clothes!
It’s painfully easy to add a them to your library.
- Find a theme that you like and download it to your local drive. Themes are typically pre-packaged as a zip file.
- Unzip the file.
- Connect to your web server via the FTP connection that you set-up when you installed WordPress.
- Navigate to the folder www\wp-content\themes on the web server.
- Upload the entire unzipped theme folder to this directory on the web server.
- Login to WordPress. Click “Appearance” then “Themes”. You should see the theme within this window.
- Click the theme to preview.
- If you like it, activate it.
- If you don’t like it, lather, rinse and repeat with a different theme until you find one that you like.
Here are a few resources for themes. Some are definitely better than others, but I have always found something that I could use.
Here are some resources for creating your own themes.
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about plugins. Then you will be on your way to having the blog that you want without spending a lot of money.
As promised…today we’ll talk about plain English instructions for installing WordPress on your server. Please feel free to comment with any questions or issues. I’m happy to help.
Here are the “official” instructions from Wordpress in case you get stuck. There are helpful tips if you run into problems as well as screenshots.
What you’ll need:
- A place to house your blog (I use GearHost). Typically, any hosting company can provide this. Make sure that your plan includes at least 1 MySQL database.
- A domain – www.mywebsitename.com. You can purchase a personalized domain at Network Solutions or any domain registrar.
- An FTP client so you can upload your files to your web server.
- A web browser.
- An hour to get the blog installed.
Step 1: After you purchase your hosting package from any hosting company, login to your hosting Control Panel provided by your hosting company. This is typically an online system. Most companies use a similar system, so these instructions should work for you. Contact the hosting company’s support team if you can’t figues this out.
- If necessary, set-up your domain on your web server. Make sure that the directory that will house your blog has “Anonymous Read/Write” permissions.
- Set-up your MySQL database within the control panel. Give the database a database name, user name and password. Also note whether the path to your server’s PHP is something other than “localhost”. For example, my path is “Server Location: mysql2.gearhost.com”. Write this information down as you will need it later.
- Logout of your web server’s control panel.
Step 2: Go to Network Solutions (or your registrar for your domain) and change the default DNS settings to the DNS for your web server. Your hosting company can help you with this. It will be something like NS1.DomainNameServer.Net or an IP address.
Step 3: Go to www.wordpress.org and download the latest version of WordPress onto your local drive. Extract it using any zip file extractor.
- Open your FTP program and connect to your server. (Your hosting company should provide you with FTP settings – Host, User Name and Password.)
- Navigate to your domain’s directory (likely the root directory).
- On your local drive, navigate to the directory that contains WordPress.
- Upload ALL of the WordPress files to your web server.
Step 4: Find the WordPress file on your local drive called “wp-config-sample.php”. It should be located in the root directory of WordPress.
- Open the file in Notepad.
- Go back to the database information that you wrote down a few minutes ago.
- Enter that information into the “wp-config-sample.php” file – database name, user name, password and path to PHP.
- When you save the file, re-name it “wp-config.php”.
- Upload that file to the Wordpress directory on the web server.
Step 5: Open your browser and go to www.mywebsitename.com/wp-admin. You should see a screen that prompts you for a Blog Name and Email address. Don’t worry – you can change this later.
- Enter a blog name and you active email address.
- Click “Install WordPress”.
- The next screen provides you with an admin user name and password. Record this information as you may need it later.
- Click “Login”.
Congratulations! You just installed your WordPress blog!
Do a little testing and play around with it to ensure that everything is working properly.
Tomorrow – the fun part! All kinds of cool themes!
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I work with businesses on marketing strategy, tactics and social media tool selection. I help create effective ways to leverage social media to meet business and marketing goals while cultivating customer engagement. How can I help you?
