Small Businesses – Come On, Get A Blog Already

Small businesses need to blog. It’s true. I tried to squeeze the reasons why into a neat sounding five or ten but I ended up with twelve. I’m sure there are even more reasons but let’s take a look at the twelve – why I think blogs are so important for small businesses to use:

1. Blogs are a break from the sales-speak that is the norm on a business website. They are a two way conversation, or at least can be, between a small business and its customers. This type of web format can help build relationships in a way that a regular website never can.

2. Blogs are the perfect platform for being less formal, more chatty, more approachable, and undoubtedly more ‘human’ in content. People like that, so people like blogs and like to follow them.

3. Not only are blogs a way for companies to reach out to their customers, they can be used to show different sides to a business, for example stories behind why a company has decided to support a certain charity. Blogs can be about anything so get creative!

4. With blogging platforms being easy to use they make editing a breeze – it’s painless for staff to learn how to update and maintain a site without needing to wait for a web designer to slot updates into their schedule.

5. The search engines love ‘em. Wordpress, especially, is loved by the search engines because the code is well written, but they also ‘know’ that blogs, by their very nature, are updated regularly – so they come back frequently and index them. That’s good for a small business that wants to do better on Search Engine Results Pages [SERPs.]

6. Blogs won’t break the bank [the good ones are all open source and free] – if you want custom web design to make your Wordpress templated site unique then you pay for that, but not the software that runs the blog.

7. They are easy to backup – plugins will backup your all important database files automatically as often as you want. It’s a set it and forget it option that can save you from a hacking disaster.

8. Blogs have a built-in RSS feed that can be used by other sites so your content can be spread far and wide over the Internet with no extra work involved on your part. And that works the other way too – your business site can be updated with content found on other sites.

9. The content is separate from the design. This means the data is always displayed on the site but with a single click the look of the site can change.

10. There are so many templates available, or you can get a custom template designed, that it’s easy to have your blog look just how you want it to, easily.

11. Blogs can get listed on a lot of blog directories – that’s more incoming links to make your site go up in the SERPs.

12. With so many plugins a blog can be customized to do so many things, like ecommerce as well as be automagically filled with content.

And lastly, [OK, so this is the bonus thirteenth reason!] you can use a blog for your whole site – well the blogging platform that is. For example, this website is all being run on Wordpress but the static business informational pages are setup to look different to the blog section, but Wordpress is running them both: a nice simple, headache free solution – the way maintaining a website should be.

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Help! My Google Analytics Has Stopped Working!

This little tale of woe is being told so that hopefully, if your Google Analytics has stopped working on your Wordpress blog, you can get it up and running in a jiffy!

Google asks us to put the code for its analytics just before the closing body tag – which looks like this: </body> in the HTML code.

Well, Wordpress uses a loop to pull together several php files to display your site as a seamless work of art – it doesn’t work the same behind-the-scenes as a Joomla template, or a basic straight HTML site. And because not all Wordpress templates are created equal, the placement of the analytics code can differ.

Watch the above video (it’s short, so don’t worry!) to see what quick fix I used to get this blog’s stats back up and running after I changed it before going on vacation. The cardinal sin was not checking the stats worked before I went away!

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Where Did The Word Blog Come From Anyway?

Where did the word blog come from anyway? That’s what I was thinking this morning, and then I remembered, “Ah, yes, weblog!” That was a long time ago in Internet years, but then it got me thinking that although the word has been in our lexicon for a good while now, people, especially small business owners, are missing out on the benefits a blog can bring to their online business.

All this thinking on my part came about because I have been working with a client recently who is still, despite my best efforts, resisting setting up a blog. It’s not a financial thing, it’s a mind-block thing.

I get asked questions a lot like, “What exactly is a blog?” or, “Who came up with the word blog?” and “How do I start my own blog?” So let’s look at these questions because they are basic and fundamental, but they are often stumbling points for small business owners who are not blog savvy enough.

What exactly is a blog? A blog is a standalone website, or part of your website, where you write posts about whatever your heart desires. I’ve noticed that often clients are confused about a blog being on their website, they think it is something separate. It can be both – this site is. I use static pages for company information pages and posts for the blog section.

The benefits of a blog are many – search engines love sites that are updated frequently and blogs by their very nature are updated a lot. Having dated posts staring at your visitors show them how often you blog and they like to come back to sites that change frequently. So, the more you can blog, the better.

Also, blogs are great because they enable dialogue. People get to ‘know’ you through your frequent communication; they can comment back to you and get into conversation. Now that’s a real benefit because when they are dialoging with you they are building a relationship with you, and that helps business.

Who came up with the word blog? Well the original word is weblog, as in logging stuff found on the web, and the credit goes to a guy called Jorn Barger. Barger has promoted anti-Semitic views online so I will not promote his blog by linking to it, just Google him if you are interested in seeing what his weblog looks like.

How do I start my own blog? There are many good services available to get you on a blogging path in less than 10 minutes [see blogger.com and wordpress.com for example] but there is something you need to bear in mind: limitations.

Using a free blogging service means limitations. You are limited to the url you use, widget and template availability. If you don’t want to stand out, or make your blog blend in with your site, then these are good options – you also have the benefit of coming up in searches on those sites’ homepages, thus enabling more people to find your blog. If you like Adsense then know that wordpress.com doesn’t let you monetize your blog that way but blogger.com will.

I love Wordpress, not just as a blogging platform, but as a web design platform. It’s got great benefits over Joomla, depending on a site’s functionality, and is not a Content Management System in the same way Joomla is, but it allows a small business owner great flexibility and ease of use when editing their site.

Using Wordpress on your own server isn’t a free option because you need to pay for hosting, but it allows you greater freedom to have a custom website design made, the addition of any widgets you like, thus adding more interest to your site, and the knowledge that your site might not disappear overnight because you are not complying to another’s terms and conditions.

If you are thinking about blogging but don’t know where to start, just remember that blogging has allowed millions of ordinary people to be heard amongst an inordinately large crowd and is responsible for poor grammar and a lowering of communication skills never before thought possible! However, blogging connects, and it connects in highly effective ways so get a blog and start blogging, your business will thank you.

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Lake Norman Transportation Commission on the Web

If you live in the Lake Norman area – Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson, or Mooresville, NC you are very aware of how this beautiful part of the world is growing. Before the economic meltdown in late 2008 the lake towns were absolutely burgeoning with new residents and although growth has slowed for now, the issues that come with growth are still evident: traffic congestion and alternative mass transit.

The Lake Norman Transportation Commission [LNTC,] headed by Carroll Gray, was recently formed to “advocate and persuade local, State and Federal officials to give high priority to needed road, interstate and commuter rail improvements which facilitate the quality of life in the Lake Norman area and provide the vital infrastructure for continued economic growth.”

By working closely with Carroll Gray I was able to consult on the best way to create a professional-looking website that honors the LNTC, and is able to be easily updated and maintained by a group of web editors who will need to get the word out to Lake Norman residents about important transportation issues and news concerning them.

Joomla is the Content Management System [CMS] that was used as the platform for the site because it is very robust, scalable and able to handle whatever functions the commission wanted to add. Using a calendar component was deemed very important so that all future meetings and events are easy to add, with recurring events a breeze.

As recommended with a new site keyword research was done, in this case to find out what people are searching for in the Lake Norman and Charlotte, NC area. Content for the site is managed by commission staff, so I provided training on using and understanding Joomla, how to write for the web, and onpage SEO.

If you would like to know more about how the LNTC is working for the betterment of traffic and transportation issues for the residents of Lake Norman, you may sign up for their newsletter at their site, or follow them on Facebook – or better yet, do both so you won’t miss a thing!

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Ten Tips To Make Your Web Page Text Stand Out

Studies have shown what you already know to be true – reading a web page’s text is very different to reading a printed page. Many people dislike reading web pages so much that they print them out to read in greater detail later, however, most visitors to your web site will simply skim through your content and make very quick judgment as to whether or not it is worth printing and reading later.

If you are one of the many small business owners turned newbie web authors, you need to know a few simple guidelines for publishing reader-friendly, effective web page text that will have your visitors staying around for more.

Make Your Point and Make it Fast!
You have to grab your visitor’s attention immediately so that in those few precious moments that a visitor scans your web page to see if it is relevant to them, they can see that it is. How is this achieved?

Here are my top ten tips to writing effective web copy:

1. Bold/enlarge your subject headings so that they are clear.

2. Use short sentences and very short paragraphs – a few sentences per paragraph tops.

3. Break up long content and link it to bullet points at the top of the page.

4. Give concise information – get to the bare bones fast, don’t waffle!

5. Cross-reference your content with other pages.

6. Keep content relevant to the subject header – extraneous information should go elsewhere.

7. Make use of white space to make your text easy to read.

8. Format your page’s text content width to narrow – don’t make visitors scan long lines of text – they won’t for long.

9. Use your keywords in a manner that won’t bore the reader – don’t needlessly repeat them: Google might like you some, but your readers won’t.

10. Well written, relevant content is important – use a spell checker so typos don’t let you down.

Small business owners often leave their web sites full of old, stale content. If you are a small business owner in this situation, and you want to write standout web content but don’t have time to add new copy, take the above tips and re-work what you already have. You don’t have to spend hours cranking out new web content because often aesthetic enhancements can go a long way to making your web site an easy read.

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