Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
June 11th, 2010 | 
Author: I recently worked with some wonderful new clients, so wanted to share with you and get them some visitors!
The first one is a business that already had a great sit. Sarah Johnson, the owner of Pampered Pet Care of Atlanta, realized the value of having a blog on her site. Having a blog gives you access to publish articles, educate people and inform clients of upcoming holiday news or services. She also knew that a blog is one of the key elements in having great search engine results.
I was able to use her current site as the template, and incorporate the blog right into it, using the same images, fonts and color scheme. She has some great things to say, so check out her blog here: http://www.pamperedpetcare.com/blog
Next is another pet sitting company, but this time they are in North Carolina. Pet Sitters of Charlotte are a relatively new company. Phil & Lisa Koch were great to work with. Phil knew that to have a site that would work “for” them, Twitter, Facebook and a blog were the way to go. I created a website using WordPress, giving them control of their own pages using the Content Management System that this blogging platform provides.
I added all of the standard features to their package including a favicon for their site, submitting their site to all of the major search engines, adding keywords, descriptions and titles, and providing them with Google Analytics to see who is visiting their site. Their site is still so new, a couple of extra visits won’t hurt, check them out! http://petsittersofcharlotte.com
The last site I want to highlight is one I worked on for a wonderful lady named Tracy Knight. Tracy and I must have had about 3 or 4 calls before I started doing work for her. She already had a blog, but was using WordPress.com which has certain limitations. Having reached the limit of what she could do with this, she began to realize that having a WordPress blog set up under her own domain would allow her to have a custom theme, put banner ads on the site, and get access to code if she needed to.
Tracy had a beautiful header image that I used as a starting point for her custom theme. Tracy’s blog provides inspiration, thought provoking questions and most of her blog posts get some great comments posted to theme. No matter your belief, religion or opinions, I think everyone can gain by taking a look at her blog. Keep up the great work Tracy! http://womenencouraged.com
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This one is short and sweet.
Do you do a lot of your blog writing in the evenings, or over the weekend? We often can’t control when the urge hits us to get creative and write. If writing at 3 in the morning works for you, that’s great, but don’t publish as soon as you are finished, many of your readers might miss it if you are putting the word out through Twitter and Facebook. Instead, simply Schedule your blog post to go out at a much more acceptable hour!
As soon as you start typing out your article, go to the right side of the post and click Edit next to where it says Publish immediately. You will now see some date controls. Here you can enter in the date and time you want the post to go out.
Once entered, click OK. Now the Publish button becomes a Schedule button instead. Click Schedule. Your post will not be made visible on your blog until the entered date and time. If you have automatic posting set up to Twitter and Facebook (which you should!) then this means your post link will be distributed to those sites at a time when more people will be on them. Bonus!
Do you sometimes find yourself stuck for blog ideas? Not sure what to write about? Well one free tool at your finger tips lies within Google.
If you head over to Google you can type in your search criteria. If your blog is about animals, type in dogs, or cats. If you write about family matters, type in marriage, children or summer camps. This is a great way to see what people are posting online and searching for.
Once you have keyed in your search, in the left navigation pane, where you see All Results, click on More search tools.
From here you will see Wonder wheel as an option. Once you do this, you will see that the results format changes slightly. You now see a “wheel” of sorts with your search phrase in the middle, surrounded by related phrases.
Drill down to the other search criteria by clicking on the phrase. You will now have a sub wheel of your original wheel search. This allows you keep drilling down, looking for new potential blog post ideas. On the right of the wheel, you will see related Google search results. Use this free tool when you are stuck for ideas. It should provide some inspiration!
Some of you reading this may be surprised to hear this, because you are organized, know who you are paying and take interest in this kind of thing, others, not so much! BUT, I am continually shocked by how many new or potential clients do not know who is hosting their website. This is a little disturbing. Here is why:
- The files for your website are stored on the hosting server. So, all of the hard work that you or a web designer put into your site is sitting out there on a server somewhere and you have no idea where.
- You are paying someone either monthly, or each year and you don’t know who. Again, not a good idea! You should know where your business finances are going right?
- If you want to change hosting companies, then the first place to start is to know where your files are right now. Not knowing can take time to uncover! If you don’t know your hosting company then you probably don’t know your account information either.
- Smaller hosting companies can easily go out of business. If this happens, you need to know how to access your files, and quick!
If you don’t know who hosts your website, do this. Go to this website: www.whoishostingthis.com Type in your website address. It will tell you the name of the hosting company where your site is hosted. Make a note of it, somewhere, anywhere! Also, if you don’t know your account information, then figure it out, either by calling them, or using a forgotten username or password link.
Hopefully you can get all the info you need, store it, and be ready when you next need it!
Many of you probably already have your own profile on LinkedIn. It’s a great tool, you can pull your blog feed directly into your profile, can network and make new contacts and it’s a social networking site to take advantage of. However, have you set your company up on LinkedIn too? Follow this link to get started: www.linkedin.com/companies
You will only be able to add your company if you already have a profile that includes the e-mail address for that company. In other words, LinkedIn needs to see you as a current employee. Add the name of your Company and your e-mail address, then click Continue.
Next, you can walk through and add items like your website address, description, industry and part of your address. Once you have added this info, you can then add your logo by uploading an image. Next add your locations, any financial information you wish to share, and your company blog.
Finally, once you are finished, your company can now be found during searches. Also, if someone hovers their mouse over the company name in your profile, a pop up window appears showing some of the information about your business.
Make sure you don’t miss out on this free opportunity to promote and market your business some more!
