Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

Chatting with a designer colleague last week, he wanted to explore just how useful WordPress can be in bringing together the various aspects of social media these days. How can the power of WordPress be harnessed with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and goodness knows how much more?

Perhaps the most immediately obvious channel that WordPress can include is Twitter – not only by encouraging us to “tweet this” but also showing us a feed of tweets (hopefully relevant!), encouraging visitors to “follow me”, and more.  And now with Facebook joining in, we can show that we “like” a blog post to all of our friends and connections – sharing our information with those that are happy keeping their social media within the one place.

And then there are our favourite online networks, forums and the link – YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn, 4Networking, Ecademy – there are many to suit our myriad profiles.

The leap from LinkedIn to Facebook is not going to suit everyone, so by including both on your blog – using your blog as the central hub – you appeal to your wider audience. Give your readers what they want – some like Facebook, others like LinkedIn, some will only see your YouTube video if you include it elsewhere, and  Twitter – which some of us love and others cannot see the point.

Use your WordPress blog as the hub and that way:

• you can be sure of owning the content
• bring together comments,
• update each of the online platforms you use
• benefit from the activity for your website (rather than someone else’s!)

The thing to do is indeed make use of the forums and platforms, but bring it “home” so that your blog and website gets the benefit too.

Hope that’s helpful – if you’re not sure, let us know and we’ll knit more…

Babs

Having recently noticed someone selling their Internet marketing wares recently and including the fact that Google picks up their blog content within an hour as a selling point, I’d rather like to point out that this is actually a simple thing for most people. It is not some magical SEO bonus bestowed upon those in the know; it is standard practice if you make it easy for Google to do such.

Think about it. What does Google want to do? What is its purpose?

Google’s aim is to provide you, the searcher/user/however you like to be known with the most relevant websites for your search. And the best way it can do that is to work those spiders hard – sending them out to updated and new content as fast as their little legs can manage (ok – enough with the analogy now!).

So how can you tell Google that you have fresh content? Well if you include a XML sitemap plugin then you’re doing it! A sitemap simply lists all the pages within a website, so any changes to this list are easily spotted and updated. When this post goes live, I’ll check Google after 10 minutes and will be surprised if it’s not listing already – not magic, rocket science or fairy dust – it’s just what Google does if you help it.

We use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin but there are several available to you (as with most plugins!). To then set this up, Settings, Google XML Sitemaps – go through each option and set to what you want. It’s quite a list, but don’t be daunted. If you’re at all unsure, leave the standard, default settings in place, or get us to check yours with you. One thing to watch is not to request updates too frequently – any such settings will be suggestions anyway, but if you do update Google too often with the same post, that may not be well-regarded. Let’s face it, daily is more than adequate for most of us – it’s not that long since we had to wait months for our pages to be listed in Google – now we’re talking in hours or even minutes.

Babs

The blogmistress and I, have just come back from the first Kaslers Tweet meet in Kent

I promised the twitter names of all who attended that I had… so go follow and send them a tweet to say hi

• Chris Lodge – @caraccidentaid
• Barry Nuttley @greenenergychap
• Adam Cowper Smith @adamcowpersmith
• Luke English @EnglishMedia
• Helen Vining @thecocktailclub
• Mark Jenner @markdjenner
• Sue Robinson – DTF
• Janet McKenner @delicakesME19
• Rodney – DTF
• Ian Smith – DTF
• Alastair Wood @Alastairwood
• Brian Tidey @briantidey
• Anthony Draper – DTF
• Stephen from Kaslers – Dtf
• Peter Eves – DTF
• Michael Breeze @michaeldbreeze
• James Primarolo
• Justin Somerville-Cotton @dunbarconsult
• Mark Loughlin @talladviser
• John Botting @johnbotting @4networkingkent
• Julie Blunt – DTF
• Mark Hickman @lovetoddydotcom
• Robert Killington @vatark @4ncrawley
• Kevin Arrow @Freight_rescue
• Marc Lemezma @lemezma @4nMaidstone
• Mike Gilbert – DTF
• Dermot Sheehan – DTF
• Babs Saul – @babssaul @blogmistress
• Sarah Arrow – @Essex_courier

DTF – Details to follow

I will be contacting everyone via email with a download of the Blogmistress’s guide filled with tips and useful info.

Lovely to meet you and put a face to the twitter name

Sarah

PS: If we missed you and you were there, please add your twitter name below – thank you (Babs)

Now that Google has confirmed that a website’s speed – the time it takes for a page to load – is taken into account when considering your website’s position, it’s even more important to ensure your WordPress is working at its most efficient. This is not cause for panic  but it is something the anyone using WordPress should have a look at – having lots of shiny plugins and fancies can slow your website/blog – so we’ll look at just what can be done to speed things up a bit.

Take a look at Matt Cutts’ blog post on this subject, and at Google’s Let’s make the web faster page.  What we’ll do with you over the next few days is take you through a few things to look at to be sure that your WordPress is not holding you back – and not just because it makes a difference to Google. Your visitors may also decide to not bother if they have to wait for your page to load.

As well as the above links, take a look at Google’s official webmaster blog post for some useful links that can help you research your own site’s speed.

Then in the next Blogmistress post we will take you through a few aspects for consideration and which can speed things up a bit and ensure your WordPress blog or website loads in a timely manner?

Ian Lurie is someone I’ve long respected, even before his Conversation Marketing book came out back in 2006. His Conversation Marketing blog is always easy to read, and he does not waffle (well, not in a way that bothers me ).

This book is rich in content and covers the topic well within the succinct 100 pages (I like succinct!)  - simply put, this is another of those “JDI must reads” for anyone marketing online – it’s easy to digest and then to action the sound guidance offered.

Ian takes us through a  model that will make sense to most good bloggers and website owners – that “the Internet offers a unique two-way marketing medium” that can attract attention and customers, and build sales when used correctly.

Reading this book will help you to make more of your website and blog, whether based on WordPress or not – it’s a standard that we all should read in order to have a clear Internet marketing strategy – which is essential to us all if we want to make the most of the web for our businesses. And of course what are blogs but conversations of a sort – well, they can be (and I suggest some of the best are).

Do you have a favourite book that has helped you with your online strategies?