Initially, web sites were a venue where information was displayed. You’d get a web developer (or even a designer), to create the code for your site, the content would be included and the site launched. It was a static environment, meaning the content was not changing. From time to time, a site would be redesigned and relaunched. In essence, these types of static sites were an online brochure. We can call them “static information sites”. They were appealing for a few reasons, among them:

1. They were cheaper than print media.
2. A large audience was reached.
3. Customized branding on the Internet, helped with marketing initiatives.

These static informational sites were coded in a way where the code and the content were combined. This made it more difficult to exchange data. To illustrate this, and how the webscape has changed, please see the video below:

As is evident in the video, things have changed quite a bit from the days of conventional (static) web sites. One almost profound issue was the separation of design and content. With dynamic web sites (where content is regularly added or changed), the content is commonly stored in a database. The coding of the site defines the structure and adds esthetic elements to each document. Then content is added to the document as it is requested from the database. This very much defines the functions of a blog - Sure a blog is still a web site, but it is dynamic! Dynamic web sites, such as blogs, appear to have greater flexibility and usability over the conventionally designed static web site, among them:

• Blog owners do not have to wait for someone to make content changes, they can do it themselves.
• Blog platforms (such as Wordpress) have built in tools that are able to promote themselves.
• The big search engines find and return results for blog driven sites faster.
• Blog driven sites can be easily updated by the owner from any location that has an Internet connection - You can do it anywhere.
• Active blog driven sites tend to rank higher in search engine results (staleness scores, etc.).
• Dynamic sites (blogs) generally have easily installed plug ins (for end users / blog owners) that facilitate the sharing of content in online social media.
• Blogs are inherently better suited to facilitating a two-way communication between site visitors and content providers.
• Blogs are often more cost effective to have customized graphic branding and are certainly more cost effective to operate. Arguably the ROI may also be better than with conventional sites.
• Blogs can display dynamic content along with static pages that never change.

Side note: A better phrasing for blog could possibly be “a dynamic interactive web site”.

As may be evident, we could go on listing more points, however one issue is that many small business owners, are not Internet savvy and are only aware of the conventional web site style. They have no concept of how dynamic sites (such as blog) are more search engine and social media friendly, cheaper to operate and can provide a better return on investment.

Do I think conventional web sites are dead? I’m not too sure about that. A lot depends on the consumer - that is the web site owner. Those that have no concept of blogs or other types of dynamic sites are probably going to stay with the familiar conventional web site. I think this is a trend that will change, as those who grew up only knowing dynamic web site become the majority.

From my personal experience, many people who are not web savvy, stumble when they hear the word “blog”, it’s almost as if they think it’s something that is so different as to become difficult? Perhaps, but it’s the idea that they have to update content that may not appeal. The crucial issue here (I think) is that people need to become more informed, taking the time to understand how a dynamic site can help them spring ahead of their competition.

As we know, blogs are a great example of dynamic sites and in a prior post (Why Every Business Can Benefit From a Blog) we found that:

• 66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source.
• 58% of blog readers, read them to find news and information they can’t find elsewhere.
• 54% of blog visitors formulate their opinions about products and companies from blogs.

The above are growing trends, so it would seem that perhaps conventional web sites, while not dead, are on their way out.

Finally, why do I think conventional web sites are falling by the wayside? Some reasons include:

• Dynamic sites like blogs are content driven, the Internet is content driven. They are both web 2.0 and there’s already a move on to web 3.0
• Business owners I’m sure, prefer cost effective solutions that can provide faster results (such as search engine response, etc).
• The newer generations of consumer and business owner are more familiar with dynamic web sites.
• Because of the two-way communication in a dynamic site (such as blogging), business owners are going to learn a lot more about their clients and potential clients.
• Dynamic sites are simpler to integrate and more appealing (because of the communication) to social media sites and promotion.

What’s your opinion? What would you add in this post? Feel free to comment below.

So it seems when many of us move to blogging type sites, it’s sometimes hard to mentally leap the barrier of “static” to dynamic (dynamic meaning content that changes). Blogs are something that engages your readers, they (blogs) facilitate two way communication between you and your readers (who, for business operators, are potential clients). All to often I notice new blog owners place some content on the blog and then sit and wait for traffic. Invariably I often get a message or phone call asking what can be done as nothing’s happening. The conversation usually sounds something like this (below being an actual transcript):

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added in-demand, valuable content to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “I did that a while back, but nobody visited the site.”

BloggerSavvy: “Have you added anything recently, content?”

New Blog Owner: “Well, no, not really, there’s not enough traffic and I don’t want to waste my time.”

BloggerSavvy:  “What things are you doing to draw traffic to your blog?”

New Blog Owner: “What do you mean? This is the Internet, won’t Google provide the traffic?”

BloggerSavvy: “Oh, I see, okay, what sites and online communities are you participating in, what activities are you doing to attract the attention of readers?”

New Blog Owner: “The blog is on the Internet, so shouldn’t I get some traffic because of that? There are millions of people all over the world on the Internet.”

BloggerSavvy: <Pausing…>

New Blog Owner: “I don’t really know what you mean or what I should do, can’t you do something? What now?”

As I’m sure we can appreciate, it seems that much of the issue is related not only to understanding the concept of a dynamic web site (blog), but also in appreciating that the off line, tangible world (where we make friends, connections, etc.) is mirrored in the online world! - The Internet. With this in mind, let’s think about that conversation…

In-demand, valuable content. That’s important, it provides original information that is demanded by readers. In other words, copying content from somewhere else (even with permission) is simply not going to garner any traffic or blog popularity. After all, if the blog uses duplicated content, what incentive is there to visit? Most readers would prefer (and will)  visit the source.

Post new content consistently. Business demands are very great on our time (myself included).  However, it’s important to always post regularly, the more often the better (as long as the content is of good quality - posting tons of low quality content will simply motivate readers to leave). When your blog is not busy, you should still post content! The thought process that it’s not worthwhile to post (since there are not many readers) is, in my opinion, a defeatist perspective. If I don’t post there are no readers - They will leave! If I’m low on readers, that’s when I must post regular content - It gives new readers some meat and potatoes… If the table is bare, it’s not very inviting - is it?

Be active in promoting your blog. You’ve got to get out there and participate, shake the trees, be active - Just like Baloo (Don’t know what that means? See the video below).

It’s a matter of gaining the experience of knowing were to participate, where to look for traffic, readers, connections - As Baloo puts it “the bare necessities”. Or… more to the point how to search. Just because your blog is accessible to Internet  subscribers, does not impart a degree of excessive traffic. This still begs the question, what now? What can new blog owners do to improve their visibility and increase readership.

To get noticed, you’ll have to make some noise. For all those new blog owners, here are some of the things I’ve done that have worked for me.

• Create a signature for your email and include and invitation to your URL. This will automatically be appended to every email you send out. eMail applications like Thunderbird, Evolution, Outlook Express, etc. all have the ability to do this.
• Join forums that appeal to your niche. When you answer questions (or ask them), most forums have the ability to include your tag line and/or signature. Again, include and invitation and a link to your URL. Do not spam forums (you’ll get banned). Instead, legitimately participate in them.
• Allow some of your content to be used on other sites only if the content links directly back to your blog.
• Participate in communities such as twitter, digg, etc. and those which appeal to your niche subject,  ensuring your profile in each of the communities you join all contain a URL to your blog.
• Comment on other blogs (do not spam - comment legitimately) with valuable content, insight, links, opinions, etc. - While making sure you include the URL of your blog in the appropriate area of the comment form you are completing.
• Always do your best to respond to readers who comment on your blog. Invite their opinions.
• Ensure your blog has the facility to allow commentors to be notified when someone responds to their comment - This invites return visits and further discussion.
• Offer to be a guest blogger on other blogs and invite your readers to be a guest on your blog.
• Make sure your blog has a “search” feature. Nothing could be more annoying than having to flip though page after page to try and find something. Make your blog user friendly.
• eMail readers and thank them for visiting.
• Get your best content seeded (included) in social bookmarking services like Stumbleupon and Delicious.

The above suggestions should help give new blog owners a good push in promoting their blog readership and traffic. Remember, don’t expect instant results, rather focus on community participation and providing quality content. If you do, your readership will grow all by itself.

What works for you that I’ve not mentioned? Have a success story you’d like to share? Feel free to add your comments below!

Well, there’s a hook to this story, some time ago I touched on the subject of disaster recovery with an earlier post about saving your data when disaster strikes. In that post we explored the issue of software and hardware solutions. In my case I invested in an affordable network storage unit. It’s a proactive solution because all my data is regularly duplicated (automatically - I don’t have to do anything) to the network accessible storage unit. After reinstalling a robust operating system (this was my last remaining Windows based PC, now every PC is Linux - Including this one), all I had to do was copy the data back off the storage unit. It even had all my email, email settings, folders, calender, etc. (I was using Thunderbird as the email client as I found I could do much more with it than with other email clients - But that’s simply my opinion).

The point of my post? Don’t negate the probability of a disaster, prepare for it now, to avoid pain later. In my case I was fortunate in that I’m a heavy user of social media to support my business, that and the contributers for some of my other blogs was an issue that kept further stress at bay. Additionally, all blogs (your’s included) should also have an automated backup system. In the case of blogging, your (self hosted) wordpress based blog can make good use of  the WP-DBManager plugin. It (as described by the developer):

“…Manages your Wordpress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database…”

In my case, the automatic backup feature is in use, in fact all databases of all my blogs are regularly emailed to a central (external) email account. Therefore, if the server itself goes down and the backups (on another server) also happen to go down as well, the database backups are still available. An additional note is that the backup unit I installed for my PC’s will also access the Internet (automatically) and download backup copies of my web sites. (Not bad for a little box!)

Don’t get me wrong, being without my main computer for a few days (because the operating system and applications needed to be installed) was inconvenient, I felt secure and stress free as the valuable data of my business and client blogs and/or web sites was safeguarded.

Again, not to belabour the issue, but to those reading this post (and to clients reading this post), please do seriously consider obtaining an automated, network attached data storage unit. When disaster decides to pay you a visit, you’ll be glad to took the proactive approach!

Have you had a disaster? What were some of the issues you faced? What types of solutions have you used (or are considering). Comment below and share in the discussion.

In my opinion, the lack of understanding the importance of social media is one of the biggest contributing factors to the lack in targeted web traffic, of any volume. All too often it seems, a web site or blog is launched and there’s almost not effective growth plan or activities that capitalize on the benefits of social media.  To be quite blunt, I’m not aware of any other low-cost effective blog promotional venues that has the capability and reach of social media.

For those not familiar, by social media venues, I’m referring to avenues such as Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Friendster, Facebook, and the like. Sites and services that are able to connect large communities of people in any given niche. Remembering of course that the better you can cater to a focused niche, the more pre-qualified your traffic is going to be.

With regards to social media marketing (or the lack thereof), I think each of us falls into one of four categories:

1. Fully aware and know how: Individuals who are fully aware of the value of social media and use it consistently to build their blog.
2. Aware and don’t know how: Individuals who are aware, but do not know how to effectively take advantage of it.
3. Unaware and don’t know how: Individuals who are unaware and do not understand how it works.
4. Don’t care and not interested: Individuals that simply avoid social media or don’t realize the value of it.

For those not familiar with social media or it’s impact, the following video illustrates the forces that shape it:

Regardless of which category of social media usage any of us fall into, it’s important at times, to be reminded of two primary inherent benefits social media offers bloggers. For those of us not familiar, the following may be an eye-opener!

Social media has a direct impact on SEO (Search Engine Optimization). How? It’s quite simple, social media builds (increasingly) the number of links back to our blogs. The more links back, the better the ranking. You might be thinking “Wait! I participate in paid link exchanges that can improve my ranking” . To be blunt, paid link exchanges that claim to improve SEO (in my opinion) are a worthless exercise and waste of financial resources. I’ve worked with numerous sites that have garnered no real benefits. In fact Matt Cutts of Google has often commented on this very issue: “Text links and PageRank” and “SEO Mistakes: link exchange emails“.

In my opinion, the most important issue with regards to social media based link building is that the links are not paid, they are permanent and of course obtained in a natural manner. By natural I’m referring to another site or blog linking to your blog as there is a genuine relationship or discourse between the two blogs. Such links are in essence a vote of trust and confidence in the value of your content. As such the more genuine links (or votes of trust) you garner from social media, the higher the authority of your blog.

I know from experience, the birth of a new blog with no traffic or social media buzz, has a difficult time to garner traffic and back links. One of the most effective ways to build them is to participate in the social media sphere! Join twitter, digg, technorati, linkedin, stumble, and so on… develop contacts, communicate, share. These are the activities that are going to help you grow your blog traffic and help you appeal to your target niche. From experience, here is one trick DO NOT ONLY POST LINKS TO YOUR CONTENT. Doing so is obvious to others in your social sphere; that you are only interested in self promotion.

Think of it this way. If you’re at a dinner party and the conversation from your side of the table always revolves around you, wouldn’t that make other guests think you’re self centered? Key issue: You’ve got to give if you want to get. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. That’s how it works. If you want others to help you, then you’ll need to freely help them. Therefore, when you’re twittering, stumbling or digging though the web, make sure you twitter, stumble and digg the content of blogs or sites you enjoy; other than your own.

Initial primary traffic encourages secondary traffic. What does this mean? Think of it this way, the more you socialize, the more contacts you make. They tell their friends, who tell their friends, and so on… Remember, social media is not about making money, it’s about making friends. Every blog, web site, business, group, organization, etc. needs friends, that’s what brings us the secondary traffic that can enable us to grow. Perry Belcher’s video (blunt language and all) expresses this very clearly (for those interested, Mr. Belcher’s blog can be found at perrybelcher.com):

As I’m sure you’ll appreciate from the video your house is your blog. That’s the place where you invite your social media friends too. That’s where you focus on your content and on listening to your readers. If your social media mission is to make money and get traffic, that’s just not going to work. Think about it this way, if you go to a party, is your “mission” to have fun or to garner followers?

The crux of the issue is that most blogs (and the businesses associated with them) seek to grow, becoming more profitable. Social Media can collect a core group of supporters (along with their peers) who can effectively recommend your blog to others. As such, it’s often these others who help grow your sales (as they were referred) and who in turn refer others through their social media networks.

Finally for those who don’t care and are not interested in Social media, what you don’t know can’t hurt you, right? Wrong… as the video below will clearly explain:

In conclusion, the more social media friends you have, the faster word of mouth will spread (with regards to your blog). Social media networking is an extremely effective manner with which to invite people to your blog. Your traffic will grow in leaps and bounds when there are a group of readers ready to answer your call to action. Readers that you found via Social Media.

What are some of your thoughts, commentary? Do you agree or disagree with some of the ideas above? How do you approach the issue of social media and blogging? Feel free to include your comments below.

As I’m sure we can appreciate, humourous as the video may be, the end result is not the fault of the developer (or so we might initially think), rather the input of the clients. It’s one thing to provide valuable input (and we should), it’s quite another to assume command as if we are a graphic design or web development professional. Let’s elaborate on some of the issues in this video the majority of which have been mirrored in actual projects I’ve worked on:

• Over analyzing.
• Too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Unrealistic time line expectations.
• Changing the parameters mid-stream.
• Adding parameters that are not related to the targeted message.
• Too much information.
• Use of copyrighted or trademarked material.
• Obtaining the advice of people without knowledge and/or outside the target niche.
• Assumptions without supportive facts.
• Assuming personal ideas are paramount and effective.
• Providing conflicting information or directives.
• Impractical expectations.
• Assuming we’re in the drivers seat.
• Use of unresearched an unrealistic ideas.

Over analyzing, resulting in a loss of focus. When we are creating (or changing)  a logo for our business, keep it’s message to the point, clear, neat and understandable. Not all ideas are good, a professional, effective graphic designer will be up front and tell us if an idea is horrible - and why. We need to (really) listen to the professionals we’ve retained. Remember, from an experience perspective they work in the graphic and online industry day in and day out, we don’t.

Who’s in charge? Ensure that one team member in our group is in charge, and the liaison with our designer. Prior to flooding a designer with all our ideas, let’s weed them out amongst our team members. Remember the old adage, “garbage in, garbage out“. To many ideas are confusing and again facilitates the loss of focus. If there are too many cooks in our kitchen, we need to remove some of them.

An effective developer or designer can give us a realistic time line to project conclusion. Expecting a Valentines Day period launch, for example, should be considered four to six months earlier for most projects. The point here is that it’s up to us to ensure we provide enough time to allow our web contractors to complete a project on target.

Once a project is in development, it is not a good approach to change the parameters. This increases costs, lengthens development time and further confuses and loses the focus of our original message. Additionally, the inclusion of new, extra materials, ideas, etc. not only delay the completion of our project, they also further muddy the focus of the intended message. This would be a time to pause and consider that our “additions” should be part of a separate project.

It’s a good idea to provide our developers, designers, copywriters, etc. with as much relevant and pertinent information as we can. However, ensure that we do not overwhelm them with superfluous information. We should feed information that retains the focus of our project message.

No, we cannot use copyrighted or trademarked information, etc. unless there is written authorization from the legal owners to do so.

When inviting input from third parties, ensure that we’re asking the right people. Namely, the very people who are our intended niche and whom our message is targeted towards.

The old adage “When you assume, you make…” is applicable here. Remember, and idea we think might be good is exactly that… “might be”. Find out, do our research, gather the facts. Listen to the individuals we have retained to service our needs.  They can very quickly provide us with feedback, in great part because they have broader exposure. Remember, just because we like something does not mean it’s going to be effective, also, it does not mean that our target market is going to like it as well.

When we provide conflicting directives and information, that should be a clear sign that we’ve lost focus of the message and it’s objective. Stop, stand back, organize and then return. Remember, an effective contractor is one who works with us, not for us.

Remember, common sense and practicality are effective approaches. Expecting impractical fixes or changes, things that work opposite to their intended or standard fashions, etc. are often impractical, silly, add extra cost and frustration to us and our target market and provide no other function than to move focus to bear upon these inconvenient “things”. Again, we really should listen to the advice of the professionals we’ve retained.

Key point, when we retain the services of  a graphic designer, web developer, copywriter, etc., we are not the boss. They are. Our job is to provide them with the tools they need. It is their job to lead the project and bring it to successful fruition! They are the experts in their fields and should not be fettered. We rely on their expertise - That’s why we hired them, as such, we should not be trying to do their job (by constantly telling them what to do and/or how to do it). Instead we should be providing feedback based upon our own research.

Granted, we’ve discussed a fair bit of what we can do to ensure our focus remains effective and targeted, but as depicted in the video above, I noticed several failings of the developer among them are the following four:

1. He never indicated or further clarified conflicting information.
2. The designer didn’t seem to communicate that the initial message was becoming lost in the graphic flotsam being added.
3. Frustration seemed to be increasing for the designer and he should have approached the client to discuss and avoid the issues that were creating frustration (he should have said something).
4. Above all, the designer should have alerted the client that their ideas are obscuring their initial focused, targeted message and that it is putting the final success of the project in jeopardy.

Conclusion? Prior to even considering a project, we should already have documented our plan and fully researched it. We should have an action plan in place (much like writing a business plan) and be able to effectively communicate and answer the questions from the professional we retain. On a personal note, the best client I ever had was one who had a web site plan developed . She gave it to me to read (and it read almost like a business plan). It listed all the information and answers to questions. It was well organized, very focused. It was designed in a way that clearly outline the objective, goals and needs, while providing the freedom for me to complete the site in a professional manner, as I needed (so as to meet the objectives).

What’s your take on this? Agree? Disagree? What would you add, remove or suggest? Feel free to comment your input below.

“Is wordpress better? and if it is can you explain why? Trying to feel my way around the blogging world!”

To answer, I think the best approach is to look at the pros and cons of self hosted (stand alone) versus site hosted (community) blogs. Personally I am biased towards a self hosted Wordpress platform as it allows for greater control and customization. Again, having said this, the real issue is how you are going to drive your content, do you require full control or are you going to hand off your blog’s control to a third party?

As most blogging platforms offer more or less similar tools; for those interested in the nitty gritty (comparing platforms) WeblogMatrix has a nice tool to help you compare actual platforms. Another nice link that Google returned was “Blog software comparison chart“.

In my (humble) opinion self hosted blogs are the best (and most professional) way to go. However, without further delay, here’s my take on the pros and cons…

Self Hosted Blogs

The good:

• Using open source software (such as Wordpress) results in an affordable installation (it’s free). There’s no payment for the downloaded code or licensing. Also, templates are free as well, unless you’re looking for a higher end professional branded look (requiring the time for a designer and/or developer to code). If you are able to design your own template, all the more cost effective for you.
• Better ability to offer or include specific interactive features. Most blogs are well supported by developers, who also provide valuable plugins, which you can install as needed. For example every feature of this blog is provided for free by other developers. Additionally, if you have the budget, a self hosted blog can be more adaptable as you can hire a developer to code a custom plugin and have it installed on your blog. Wordpress (as an example) has a huge repository of plugins that handle everything from Adsense to ZenCart (ZenCart is an ecommerce platform).
• Complete (full) control, is the best benefit (in my opinion). Nothing speaks louder and looks more professional than the ability to stand out from the crowd. Additionally the professionalism is also further enhanced by facilitating the use of your own registered domain name. In my opinion (and I’ll probably annoy some people by saying this) using a URL that contains yourname.blogger.com or yourname.wordpress.com is akin to using a hotmail or yahoo email address on your business card - It looks tacky and unprofessional.
• You can always backup the blog content automatically by having the hosting company configure the server to do this for you.

The bad:

• To properly host your own blog, you’ll need to obtain the services of a reliable web hosting company (that can provide support when you need it!). In my case I run my own business that hosts my blogs and those of my clients. Hosting will cost extra money. Also, the registration of your own branded domain name will cost a little bit extra.
• Sometimes the installation of the blog software can be complicated, but if you have a good rapport with your hosting company, they might set up the database for you and install the code - Then all you’ll need to do is configure the blog the way you’d like it.
• Updating blog packages can also be tricky. Most of them update their code regularly, if you are technically savvy, you’ll be okay. If not, you’ll need to retain the services of a developer to do this. The same can be said for plugin updates (however Wordpress is super cool and easy to update plugins in).
• Security can be an issue if you are not familiar with Internet systems and technology, however a reliable hosting company should minimize issues for you. Side note: ALWAYS have a backup of your blog current files and current database in your possession.
• These types of blogs depend on templates and it is easy for popular templates to appear on more than one blog. Remember, you need to stand out and be seen!

Site Hosted Blogs

The good:

• Usually the cost is free. All you need to do is sign up and provide the required details to start blogging.
• Software is updated regularly (as are any plugins), you don’t have to know how to do this.
• These blogs are easy to operate, there is a low learning curve.

The bad:

• Because the URL is not your domain, you’ll lack the professional (and easy-to-remember) URL. In my opinion, to some degree, your promoting the site that is hosting your blog with your content.
• Lack of control is an issue, remember, this type of blog is under another domain’s banner and your blog would be subject to it’s rules (not yours).
• Limited options are also an issue in that you cannot install plugins or other software solutions that are not already included in the package offering. As such, you have a reduced ability to adapt and customize features, etc.
• Speaking of customization, these types of blogs also are dependent on the default templates that come with them. Inevitably is can be difficult to distinguish your blog from the others (as I’ve often observed how similar they appear). In any event there will always be the branding of the “promoting site” on your blog.

While I’m sure that we could spend excessive hours (and pages) extolling the virtues for and against various platforms and the associated pros or cons, I think one pertinent point remains as a call to action:

If you are seriously considering a professional blog then you should (seriously) pursue the self hosted avenue (using Wordpress).

If you want to experience installed blog versions without installing them yourself, then you can visit the “blog” section of OpenSource CMS. I have been using this site for several years to see working versions of packages before I download and install them. Also, I quick Google search also returned the post “Choosing a Blog Platform” which should help further clarify not only my opinions but also reinforce some of the issues raised in my post above.

What are your thoughts? Any pros or cons I should have included? What’s your take on this? Comment below and let us know.

While I visit Seth Godin’s blog regularly (it’s a valuable resource!) and value the information and resources (he’s been blogging longer than I have), unless I’ve misunderstood, I just can’t agree that word of mouth is decaying, instead I think it’s a matter that less people are realizing, or learning how to use it effectively (my opinion of that blog post is that Mr. Godin appears to favour viral marketing over word of mouth; in this case). On the other hand Erica DeWolf’s post continues to quote Dave Balter, where he surmises that:

“Viral marketing is typically reserved for programs where the advertising is talked about as opposed to the product itself. A good example are viral videos, where the humor trumps the brand, ala Cadbury Schweppes drumming gorilla video—humorous partly due to the Phil Collins soundtrack, of course—and the parodies which followed.

Word of mouth is the actual sharing of an opinion about a product or service between consumers. Your viral marketing only works if it gets people talking about the product itself. If it doesn’t, you might create some laughter and awareness, but there won’t be a change in sales.”

Again, while these individuals have been blogging longer than I and certainly have had longer career’s within these arenas, I think a key point he makes in a very subtle way is that word of mouth is a real person-to-person sharing of an opinion - and the mere nature of that sharing is understandably powerful. He also points out that viral marketing has an Achilles heel, in that awareness does not change sales. Personally I’ve often seen viral videos of a product, service or public statement that are very funny, so much so that I pass them on. However, if asked what the product, service, etc was - I’d not have a clue! I’ve also often seen this on television advertising, the adverting is so funny and amusing that it captures 100% of my interest but 0% of knowledge retention. And here’s the funny thing, if someone specifically tells me about a good product or service - I remember it! Is word of mouth here to stay? I think it is!

This leads me to the opinion that both tools (viral and word of mouth) have their uses. The old saying “Find the golden middle-way” comes to mind. In my opinion, viral advertising is better used for short term traffic volume to garner awareness. Word of mouth, in my opinion, is a tool best used for long term steady traffic growth.

Dave Balter (founder of BzzAgent) authored an incredible,  readable, useful book, (which you can download a free copy, as a special treat to my readers):  The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II. While the book is available for download through various blogs, I wanted to include it here for your ease and because I think all my readers should at the very least take a peek.

I’ve found the book to be valuable as it’s not written from a simple, knowledgeable perspective. It’s different! Instead, it’s written by an individual who lives and breathes “Word of Mouth”. I’m learning from his book, how “managed” word of mouth can help me reach my goals. In my case, I’ve learned that the products and services I provide do not promote (or speak) for themselves, rather the use of managed, guided word of mouth will better enhance my exposure and awareness (by other people of my products and services).

To be honest, I initially did not think the book would be worthwhile, but downloaded it anyway. It was only after I scanned a few pages that I thought it was good, and began reading. I also found it particularly useful in that it presented me with good ideas and interesting arguments. whether you’re aware of it or not, you’ll want to download a copy as well. I’m not suggesting that 100% of the content is for you (as there were some parts I did not focus to much on while reading as I was familiar with them), I’m sure that there’s at least one gem that will help you!

Overall, I found it also helped me to broaden my own perceptions and ideas while giving me some useful tips. And I don’t mind saying that it was also a good read.

But don’t take my word for it (or dare I say pandering?); to make my point, what’s unusual about the photo below and why?

Download: The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II and read the book to find out!  Please don’t forget to share the link on twitter!

What’s your take on the book? Do you agree with my opinions? Feel free to add your thoughts and opinions below.

Today I received another link (from the same group), the video is below (”A Vision of Students Today”). The specific topic deals with the characteristics of students today. While this may not be directly related to blogging, some of the comments and suggestions within this video are not only moving but also provocative in that (I think) bloggers, such as myself, need to stand back from time to time and put ourselves in someone else’s shoes (such as our readers). Doing so perhaps can empower us to provide content that is more meaningful and useful (among other things). A case in point from the video, “18% of my teachers know my name”.

About the only intelligent response to the video that immediately comes to mind is: What are we doing?!

Given some of the statements such as: “I will read 8 books this year, 2300 web page…” in my opinion implies (to me at least) that bloggers need to maintain a higher quality of content and ethics.

Again, while this video may not be directly related to blogging, I thought it provided a message that we all need to stand back and listen to, in many ways it was also moving.

I think we need to put things in perspective.

Remember, if your packaging (blog design) looks unorganized, ugly, “busy”, disorganized, etc. then that’s the message your sending to potential users. In other words your design is telling visitors a fair bit about your blog, before they even read the content. If the blog looks terrible or is not functional, you’ll probably lose that visitor. A blog with horrible typography (fonts), positioning or navigation is a clear message to readers saying “I don’t have attention to detail, I don’t care about quality, I am not professional“. After all, would you go to a wedding with dirty worn-out jeans and a soccer tee-shirt? Of course not!

Having said this, let’s pause for a moment and consider that design is not just about the graphics on your blog but more importantly, design is about planning and functionality. And in my opinion, graphics take a back seat to the functionality of your design. If the blog is poorly planned and has poor functionality, no manner of quality graphics is going to improve it. (If I cannot easily access what I need from the blog, then why would I return to visit again?).

To fix or change such issues, we’ll need to take a hard critical look at our blogs. We need to pay special attention to any sidebar widgets, our navigation and where elements are placed on our blogs.

Look at your blog (do it right now) and ask yourself:

1. Do I really need all these buttons and widgets in my sidebar?
2. Which things can I move out of my sidebar and place in my blog’s footer, header or navigation?
3. What home page (or sidebar) elements can I move to a separate blog page?
4. Which plugins can I find that will combine the jobs of two or more existing ones?
5. Does my sidebar really need all these links? (Am I really receiving as much beneficial traffic from them as anticipated?)
6. What things in my blog layout (including sidebar elements, widgets, etc.) is distracting my readers?
7. Do my “link exchange” links really do anything for me?
8. Is my navigation simple and intuitive?

While many of us will feel a bit of trepidation about removing or moving something from our blog design (I always do), there are some simple factors we can take into account - and make the hard choices. Much in the same way we need to prune our plants to make them grow nicely (and it’s hard to do), we need to do the same with out blogs.

One aspect that needs particular attention is linking and link exchanges. The Link Exchange web site explains some of the Bad Link Exchange Practices and SEO Mistakes that we all can make at times.

Another helpful online tool from Bad Neighborhood provides a text link tool to help you eliminate questionable links. Why is this an important thing to consider? From their site:

“…Text links are an important factor in today’s search engine optimization, and exchanging links with other websites is a good way to get them. However, doing a link exchange with a website that is penalized can have some detrimental results…”

In other words, if you’re linking to “bad” sites, your SEO may be penalized. Why am I mentioning linking and link exchanges? Because a list of links just adds clutter and in my experience… Most people don’t use them as they don’t provide any added value! If you want to link to a site, or exchange links, it’s more effective to write a blog post (or page) that also highlights some of the benefits of the link. A list of links does not do that, as such is not very useful.

Widgets and buttons? I found out from my other blog that many of them are not worthwhile and simply clutter your blog up with visual noise. Remember what your focus is (the niche your blog caters to) and keep this focus in mind. Evaluate your traffic statistics, if a widget is not serving you the traffic you expected and provides no “real” value to readers - then remove the widget! Also, if a button is not related to your blog, why post it on the blog?

For example placing buttons that show your blog’s traffic statistics to readers makes no sense. Why? They are there to read about your products, services, etc. not about how many people visited you. As such, that would simply be another piece of clutter. Another example, if I’m a photographer who has uploaded my work to Flickr, a Flickr widget might make sense, but not a “Who has visited my blog” widget (again, readers are interested in your photography work, they are not interested in what strangers are doing).

One resource you may find helpful is Smashing Magazine’s post: 7 Ingredients of Good Corporate Design. It provides some valuable insight into design, typography and branding among other aspects. When you’re reading this, one question you should keep in mind is how you could redesign your blog for the future.

One final issue of cleaning up our design I’d like to address is sound. That’s right, you’re blog could be turning people away because of noise. Some examples of “sound clutter” on blogs:

• Noises or beeps every time someone clicks a link. After a while it get’s annoying and effectively can become a deterrent for many people.
• Videos automatically starting to play. This can be an issue if there are more than one video streams on a post, let the reader click to play when they are ready.
• Music automatically playing when a page or post is visited. Keep in mind that we don’t all have the same musical tastes. Also, this can become a deterrent when people visit your site, they may be researching your services or products but will leave when the music starts playing, as they do not want co-workers or management to assume they are playing with the computer on company time.
• Talking avatars in our blog’s sidebar - And I’m going to go out on a limb here and say those talking avatars make a blog look cheap, unprofessional and provide no real concrete value, they are, in my opinion, tacky.

In conclusion, if I could some the above into one phrase, perhaps it would go something like this:

“Prune your blog’s design. Remove features that have not provided expected results. Keep your graphics clean and simple“.

To help you with this excersise, look at what some of the successful blogs are doing, this will provide you with ideas and visual examples of how to accomplish the “clean up” tasks above. Blow is a list of blogs that I think have good design, in varying degrees:

TechCrunch

ReadWriteWeb

techdirt

Gizmodo

So… before moving on to the other posts in this series, let’s get our design cleaned up!

What would you suggest? What have I missed? What’s your input? Share your comments below and help everyone out (don’t forget to include a link to your blog!)

It seems that launching a blog for some new and inexperienced blog owners is a huge exercise (and for some a steeper learning curve than for others). I’ve often observed clients who have launched their blogs, fail to garner traffic, further excitement and buzz, or for that matter, reach any of their goals and blogging aspirations. After a time they become discouraged as they feel let down by their blog.

One of the biggest barriers I’ve observed (among others) is that often people just don’t do anything, mainly because some don’t quite know what to do (or how) and others just need more motivation.

Some launch their blog and expect the Internet horde to rush over and visit. To be blunt, the days of “Build it and they will come”, are long over. A blog is akin to your business tools, if you don’t use it, it will become rusty. Defining some of the barriers to improving a blog is well and good, but what can we do about it?

As many of you know, I’ve recently recovered from a disaster, which prevented me from posting for a few days. As such, this has provided me further motivation to provide more valuable content; content that I’m sure you’ll all find valuable.

This post is the beginning of a series exploring hands on activities we can complete, after which you’ll have improved your blog. We’ll be completing activities such as linking, using social media, cleaning up our blog design, developing and examining our SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), creating sticky posts, improving SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and much more!

Personally, I urge you to please do three things:

1. Diligently participate in each activity.
2. Provide feedback in your comments as it’s helpful to everyone.  Learning not only about successes but also suggestions and alternatives.
3. Provide ideas or suggestions if you think I’ve missed something.

As some of you are aware, I recently experienced two disasters that effected my blog and how I worked. The first disaster resulted in the initial loss of my blog (and several hours of work it took to write the initial content). The second resulted in the near-loss of data on my computer and a loss of my Internet connection. Both issues lost me time and cost me money.

Issue #1 - Software Related

The web server was configured to automatically create file and database backups every 24 hours. I even received the daily email messages, indicating the backups were created; and faithfully downloaded the new backups each day. Shortly after a I launched this blog, a scripting issue on the server caused all databases to be dropped (deleted). Normally it would be a simple fix to use the existing backups to restore the blog, without much stress.

The reality:

The backups were not overwriting the old ones. So while I was able to use the backups to obtain lost content, the actual data was old (and therefore out dated). Needless to say, it was upsetting to think that I may have lost all my content for a newly launched blog. Unfortunately, the database backup only contained the default blog post and comment entries that are included with the basic Wordpress installation. I did have the files (they were also on my PC), but again, the most important aspect of the blog was the posts (contained in the database).

Fortunately I was saved by the Google Cache, Windows Live Cache and Yahoo Cache using the search term “site:bloggersavvy.com”. If you need to reclaim your posts from the cache you can use the same command to obtain copies of your lost posts using the  same search syntax (site:your-domain-name.com). That search term will list all the pages of your site that the Search Engines have indexed and cached. As this was the only recourse, I was lucky to recover 100% of my posts and pages! It took about 8 days for all the content to appear in the cache. One thing I noticed was that I had to search several times a day to catch cached pages, as in some cases cached posts disappeared quicker than I expected (so keep monitoring and save your lost pages right away).

What I learned:

• Do not rely or trust in the accuracy of automated backup scripts. Actually read the contents to confirm accuracy.
• Do not rely on one or two copies of backups, have a third (independent) “fail safe” to save your posts if your primary backups fail.
• Always have an action plan in the event of such a disaster, if you have a plan you will avoid the stress of trying to determine a solution, when things are not working. Speaking of which, finding solutions when you are under stress is not as productive as finding them when things are okay.
• Solve the problem before it happens, be proactive. Had there been a third independent backup system operating, chances are the recovery would have taken a couple hours at most (instead of a week).

Issue #2 - Hardware Related

I configured my computer to automatically download all data, every 24 hours. This resulted in backups being created on my PC (which I later forwarded to another small file server on my local network). This resulted in me having a second off site backup of all my blog posts and files (the first backup remains on the hosting server). Also because I would copy the backups (on my PC) to another file server, I had a third backup. A backup of the backup so to speak.

The reality:

While I was diligent in ensuring I had off site backups (with current data), I failed to plan effectively for a hardware failure. My computer has two hard drives and both of them started to fail! My operating system became crippled and it was hard to boot up the PC. I used a bootable diagnostic disk from the hard drive manufacturer and their diagnostic confirmed the hard drives were failing. To further compound this issue, I had a switch on my network (it acts like a hub to allow more than one computer to access the network - and internet), which failed, resulting in me not being able to access the Internet.

Replacing the switch was easily accomplished by a quick trip to the PC hardware store. I had to order 2 new hard drives to replace the failing ones and reinstall the operating system along with the applications. Before doing this, I needed to reclaim the lost data (as the file server only had some of the data copied to it). After phoning a few data restoration companies, who gave me (in my opinion) excessive and expensive options of $250 - $3500 CDN, before even working on obtaining the actual data, I decided to find out other options. I send a few messages on twitter from a friend’s computer and used Google to search for some self-help options. I found a good solution for about $135 CDN, called “Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recover“. I downloaded the demo version first, just to see if it could access the drive (it did) and then paid for the full version to recover my lost data (which automatically sent it to the working file server). One issue I had to deal with was the constant reboots of the system (not because of the recovery software) but because of the failing drives (which the operating system was also on). It took almost four days to finally reclaim just about 100% of my data.

I also opted to install a proactive solution and purchased a D-Link DNS-321 network storage unit, to which I added two more hard drives again, and had one mirroring all it’s contents to the other. In the event when one of those drives fails - and eventually they will, the second drive in that unit will be a duplicate of the failed drive.

Waiting for parts, installation of software, etc. cost me about a week of lost time and work. But using the data recovery software and replacing the hardware fixed all issues.

What I learned:

• Always plan for unexpected hardware failures. Moving parts (such as hard drives) do eventually fail.
• It is unrealistic (for home users or small business operators) to keep extra hard drives on hand, so make sure there is a separate storage unit (that is a backup of your existing data).
• Keep 3 sets of blog backups at the very least. One on the web server, one on your PC and the third on a separate system (or backup network storage unit). Doing so is proactive and resolves data loss issues before they happen).
• Be nice to your web hosting support team! - If you are nice to them, they will be nice to you. Capiche?

I should note that there are online solutions as well, such as:

• Remote Backup using Rsync or FTP.
• Rsync Remote Backup.

However, I have not actually used their services, so have no idea of the support or service level quality. I’d appreciate (we all would, I think) comments below from anyone who does use online backup services. Are they effective, easy, affordable, etc? Please let us know in your comments.

Side note: I also use a Wordpress plugin that supports automatic backup scheduling of my blogs database and emails me a copy of the database every day, it may help you too.

In conclusion, I cannot stress enough the need for all blog owners (such as myself) to have a disaster plan ready. Doing so will reduce stress and down time. Additionally, the second factor that needs extra emphasis is to ensure you operate in a proactive manner. Remember that your data (and the blog requiring it) can be effected by software failures, hardware failures, malicious activities, and so forth. As such, I cannot stress enough the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that redundant backup systems bring.

Here’s a helpful how-to backup video from BetaFlux Studios on YouTube: “…it will show you how to create and run a very important backup utility in your operating system…”:

Have you had any issues similar to these? How did you resolve them? Did I miss anything in this post? Or do you provide related solutions that help blog owners? Feel free to answer below!

Side note: Many of these applications are also available to my Linux friends (and Mac) too.

For all those who asked, and those interested to know, I’m sure something on the list below will be useful:

1) eMail Communication.

Thunderbird is an email client that features intelligent (learning) spam filters, spell checker and customizable layout. It provides IMAP/POP support, HTML email composing, email search, address book, advanced message filtering, address completion, import tools, and multiple email and (RSS) newsgroup accounts. You can add extensions for extra features including:

• Quicktext email template creation and for super fast addition of predefined text snippets to an email message.
• Display Mail User Agent so that you can better see what application is sending you email. This helps in avoiding spoofed email. For example, Google is never going to send you email using Outlook Express.
• Duplicate Contact Manger helps you avoid duplicated contacts in your address book.
• Multi Language Dictionaries allow you to customize your spell checking option.

2) Web Surfing.

Firefox helps you browse web pages faster (for improved researching), more safely, and more efficiently. Some good features are pop up blocking, tabbed browsing to let you view multiple web pages in a single window, and opening links in the background so that they’re ready for viewing when you’re ready to read them. Again, there are several plugins I use, which may also aid you. Some of the ones I find most helpful (among others) are:

• Add Bookmark Here 2 is an extension that facilitates adding your bookmark to any category without wading through the menu system.
• Colourful Tabs creates a different colour for each tab. It makes tabs easy to see and easy to switch too when I have an excessive number of tabs open. (Which happens often when I’m conducting online research).
• Copy Plain Text helps me avoid the formatting when I am copying text between pages and blog posts. Nothing’s more annoying then copying text to find it’s also duplicated the font, colour, font size, etc. This extension gives you the choice to copy something as plain text only.
• Kgen allows us to see which keywords are strong on our blog post and pages. Then we can use them on social sites as more effective (and relevant) tags or for SEO (Search Engine Optimization.
• PrintPDF enables a simple print to pdf function for Firefox. Simple and useful.
• Read It Later is one of the tools I use the most! Sometimes I don’t really need to keep a bookmark of a page; I just need a way to flag it for later reading. This extension does just that, it helps me avoid cluttering my bookmarks with pages I’ll probably only read once or twice.
• Reload Every will reload a web page every so many seconds or minutes (that you set). It is very useful for pages where the content is changing. For example, I use it when sniping items on eBay, (this allows me to place a bid at the last possible moment). It’s an automated way to keep refreshing content in your browser window.
• SEOQuake is a robust tool that helps with SEO and Internet promotion. It’s an intelligence and investigation tool that simplifies your access to pagerank, indexing, keywords, social site inbound links and other features.
• TagSifter is a way to tag each bookmark you make (with one or more tags). This makes searching for bookmarks or related bookmarks, faster and simpler.
• Update Scanner is useful to us when a site does not have an RSS feed as it monitors site changes. It also helps us monitor changes to pages (also when the changes won’t be found in a site’s RSS feed).

3) File Uploading.

Filezilla is an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) application that allows you to upload and download files to and from your server. One useful feature is the ability to resume (in case the connection to your web hosting server is interrupted. Most of us will use the Filezilla Client (not Server).

4) Content Mirroring.

HTTrack helps keep a local copy of all your blog content on your local PC. While I always stress that you must keep an off site, current backup of your blog files and database in your possession at all times. This tool will maintain a full copy of your blog content on your PC, or on your laptop. It also allows you to display your blog when a web connection in unavailable.

5) Web Browsing Safety.

PeerGuardian helps protect us form visiting bad sites as it maintains an IP blacklist. If a web site or blog is hosted on a blacklisted IP, PeerGuardian will intervene to safeguard you.

6) Offline Blogging.

w.bloggar is a tool that I can take with me (on a USB flash drive). It allows us to edit posts when we are not connected to the Internet. It also allows us to create posts when not connected to the Internet. Our content is save locally. When we have a connection we can simply publish our changes and new posts and voilà, they will appear in our blog.

7) Healthy Blogging.

Workrave helps me in preventing of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). It frequently alerts me to take small pauses, rest breaks and restricts me to my daily limit. I find I’m in front of the PC all day and this application helps me avoid not only wrist, arm, shoulder and neck pain; but also helps avoid eye strain.

8) Accounting Information.

GnuCash is a personal and also a small business accounting package. I like it because it is cross platform friendly (meaning I can use it on Linux and Windows). It’s easier to use than the name may suggest. <Smiling here>.

9) Presentation Creation.

Wink is a great tool for those of use who need to create tutorials and presentations for our blogs.

10) Traffic Building Tool.

TweetDeck, being one of the most recent applications I use to monitor twitter as well as communicate with twitter users. It’s simpler to use (in my opinion) than some of the other applications I’ve tried. It helps me break down the communication into manageable chunks, that way I’m not spending excessive time on twitter.

11) Document Creation.

OpenOffice helps me create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. I use it to create seminar presentations and documents for my blog clients. Again, there are a fair number of extensions that allow you to improve upon features and enhance your blogging productivity: Open Office extensions.

12) Graphic Creation.

Gimp helps me retouch photos or create new images. It also comes with a long list of plugins, from which you can select and install.

13) Time Tracking.

ToDoList facilitates time tracking using timers you can activate when you are working on a task. It helps make time tracking painless and improves productivity (as you can see where your time is spent and where you could better spend it). You’ll notice it has lots of other features too.

14) Desktop Publishing.

Scribus is a desktop publishing software that with an intuitive interface; usable for press-ready documents. Again it’s cross platform ready, so I can create print page layouts on Linux, Mac or Windows.

15) Data Backup.

BackupPC is my favourite automated backup system. It back up all the important data on my blogging computer to another server (which in my case is on an internal network). It helps prevent data loss if my PC fails (saving my contacts, documents, bookmarks, images, PDF’s, etc.)

As may be evident, there’s not a lot of “extra” software installed on my “Blogging Box” (the PC I use exclusively for blogging). It’s a lean, mean machine. Humour aside, one aspect to good applications and good productivity is to eliminate the “fluff” and interruptions in your work flow. Again, one huge benefit is that all the software is free, there is no cost.

While I’m sure many of you may have seen or use other applications I’ve not mentioned (or may not have considered), this list is by no means exclusive. What applications do you think are good for bloggers? What big omissions have I made? Comment below and let us know what else should be on this list.

Before I go into the details below, I’d just like to point out a caveat. Most new blogs struggle to gain exposure, they need to be found by readers. Subsequently the issue of long term, sustained growth versus sudden spurts of short term growth (as new reader communities discover a blog), becomes the fulcrum (so to speak). In my opinion, the best approach is long term growth. This means your earning a few new readers each day, each post, each comment, etc. This really is where your focus should be (and most blogs do seem to fall into this category). When communities do discover you, through Digg, Slashdot, etc. that’s the cherries, the desert. Enjoy it, but remember that not all of them return. Normally there’s a sharp, sudden increase in traffic and a sharp drop. But each time you should be able to retain a few more readers. Your long term growth, that’s the meat and potatoes! That’s one thing which will make you big and strong.

One of the mistakes I made (initially) was to try and garner traffic from everywhere. I had the thought that the whole Internet was my audience. That’s just not true. Someone interested in knitting had no interest whatsoever in my earlier blog. If they visited at all, it was a one-time only visit. To better prepare myself (for long term growth), I should have mapped out what type of reader I wanted my blog to interest. In essence, I should have written down a profile and then only marketed to that niche. You’ll get much better traffic and faster growth if your activities are geared to target and attract a specific readership. Think of it this way, do you want pre-qualified traffic or just traffic.

Search engine optimization (SEO) was another area I could have tweaked a bit more. Not so much in terms of page rank, Google indexing etc., but in terms of content accuracy. What I mean by this is to ensure that I did take the time to provide individualized keywords, descriptions, etc. for every single post! At that time I was a bit lazy and let Wordpress do all the work. In hindsight, I’d suggest using a plugin called All in One SEO Pack. It allows you to customize the keywords, descriptions, etc. for every single post, as you write or you can go back later and edit those things. Make sure you use it. One thing though, in my opinion search engine page rank, et al are NOT the holy grail. They should NEVER be your focus or your primary strategy. I remember getting caught up in the hype only to find out that some of my posts were ranking highly, not because of any SEO, instead, as a result of quality content and other blogs linking to it (among other factors).
As I alluded to earlier, there can be sudden bursts of traffic from sites (such as Digg). Frankly when this happened, I’d revel about it. I even remember phoning friends, telling them about the incredible traffic or how the post was on Diggs front page - It was party time! However, not once did I consider how to retain a larger share of those potential readers. I found out the traffic would have a sharp and steady decline over the next five days, but never consider looking at the long term incline. I was focusing on the wrong numbers! I should have been looking at maximizing the number of repeat visitors. For example, features to retain some of these new readers should have included:

• Cross linking to relevant posts within my content as well as a short list of the most relevant content (to the post being read). Incidentally, there is a plugin that will assist you in doing so, and it’s called Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, which helps visitors find related content of additional interest to them.
• Ensure I’m using a cache on the blog, so when a sudden surge of traffic appears, the site will remain available (not returning error messages).
• Allow for reader interaction (like comments), and make sure you respond. Provide a poll, you can even email them direct and thank them for visiting (I kid you not, common courtesy is always nice and professional), use your imagination, there are lots of interactive features you could use.
• Invite them to follow you on twitter, subscribe to your blog RSS, new post notifications, newsletters, and so on

Side note: For those looking for some useful and productive plugins, you can find more via 25 Most Beneficial Wordpress Plugins an of course a shameless plug to contact me on twitter @BloggerSavvy

Finally, one important aspect I wish I used in the early stages of that blog was to go out and shake the trees. I spent almost all my time tweaking Wordpress code, tweaking plugins, creating posts, researching blog technologies and content, responding to visitors, etc. Not once did it occur to me that one of the strongest factors to increasing my traffic was to involve myself in the very community I was writing quality content for! Visit their blogs, ask questions, provide comments and input, extend invitations and so forth. Think about it this way, if I want to get people to visit for a barbeque I have to phone them right? Well… it’s the same on the Internet. Don’t be afraid to ask, get involved, be happy and enjoy what you’re doing. Remember you are writing for people, not at them!

To come back to the original question, “About how long does it take for traffic to start picking up?”, it’s really up to you and your niche (community). The more involved you get the faster the growth may be. If you are very serious about blogging, are not afraid of the work and are committed. You’ll find that your traffic will reach your targeted level - Don’t worry about that, don’t focus on that. Just make sure you focus on your blog’s goals and ensuring your community is given the content and tools they need and want from you. If you focus on these things, the traffic will take care of itself.

As an afterthought, before I go, I’d like to highlight three traffic related activities you should never do:

1. Never spam users. If in launching a new service, you’ve added some of the people in your contacts, and they ask to be removed from your list. Do so immediately and with a smile!
2. I’ve received a lot of links lately where I’m promised all sorts of traffic to my blog if I buy their software or services. DON’T DO IT! Why? Your URL is entered into software by you or them. Then it connects to a huge list of proxy servers. The program is run by them (or you) for a several hours. Upon review of your web traffic statistics, it appears that lots of people visit your site (because those logs show visitors from thousands of different IP addresses). What’s really happening is that your blog is only being pinged by the proxy or pages are being requested, no one really actually reads your blog. Don’t waste your money on this.
3. Don’t use other blog/web site generators and similar Internet tricks. Such “Black Hat” methods work temporarily at best. Your blog is best grown by setting up and planning for the long term.

I chose my Linux (Ubuntu) based blog, selecting the statistics for a full year (July 17, 2007 to July 17, 2008 - Since it I didn’t start promoting it until July) and was rather surprised by a couple things. I assumed that Google would still be the prime traffic source. I also assumed that all the links from other (non-blog, “traditional” sites) sites would rank high. I was surprised in both cases. I personally found it interesting to note that you get a good statistical perspective on a day-to-day basis, but you’ll get a more accurate view if you stand back and look at the big picture over a longer time period. Here are the results below:

As you can see above, Social Media sites took the lead (just a tich ahead of Google). I also found it significant that inbound traffic from other blogs had a clear lead over inbound traffic from “traditional” (static) web sites. Equally surprising was how I saw that Google outperformed inbound search engine traffic by a massive lead.

The specific driving force within the Social Media (36.41% traffic), without question was StumbleUpon, which championed a massive lead of social media based traffic at 85.56%. Just look at the Social Media results breakdown below:

One thing I found interesting to note is some users of StumbleUpon shared some of the post links they saw in Reddit and Digg. So… while some posts that went viral, Digg and Reddit produced traffic spikes, they were only significant for a short time period. Instead, social media sites  (primarily StumbleUpon) saved those “traffic spiked” posts and subsequently that blog enjoyed long term, year round traffic.

What did I learn from our discussion and an examination of the blog statistics? Among several things, below are some of the points that were more predominant.

• There’s a lot of discussion about to benefits or lack thereof, with regards to using sites that can provide instant massive traffic volume (such as Digg). While sites such as Digg may provide short term spikes (for the average blog). Visitors to sites such can and will share your post link with others. As such, don’t discount the power of sites such as Digg. Short term effect, but a long term social effect.
• Google still loves me. Humour aside, SEO or the lack thereof can have a large effect on traffic form search engines - I think we know that. More to the point however, I noticed that the posts that are heavily shared on social sites have a much higher page rank than those which don’t, appearing higher in search results. It seems to me therefore, to continue providing quality content that is of value to the “community”.
• Continue to participate in blogging and other dynamic platforms. Convert the remainder of my old-fashioned static site to dynamic packages (blogging, CMS, etc.)  Why? When you post a blog, it pings site update services (such as pingomatic). Static (”traditional”) sites don’t do that. Each time a post is published RSS readers obtain the updates, automatically. These are things that help drive repeat visits (subscribers). Many of which might be adding your posts to various social sites.

While I’m fairly sure many blog sites may follow the general pattern I’ve seen with my traffic sources. I don’t think they will all follow the pattern established in the social media site rankings. This is mainly an issue of blog character, readership, blogsphere area and so forth. Not all blogs are in the same neighbourhood and have the same types of readers. For example a blog that focuses on internet marketing, I would assume might have more traffic from Sphinn, for example.

All too often, I find business owners (and site owners) oblivious to the power that dynamic sites can bring them, and how they are better able to make use of social media sites. In other cases, business owners simply don’t believe what they are being told as they appear not to have a good grasp of how the Internet really works and how their potential market really uses it.  My previous post “Why Every Business Can Benefit Form a Blog” for example, shows that a UK survey indicates “…66% of businesses believe that blogs are becoming more influential as an information source…” While this number is UK based, I assume it may be similar in other geographic regions and , more importantly, will to grow!

It will be interesting to see how the trends change over time. Perhaps one of the upcomming issues that search engines will need to address even further than they are now, is the inherent appeal of sites (such as blogs) that are better equipped to address the needs of site visitors. What new tools will be available to blogs desiring visibility in a growing webscape? As the video in my prior post (link at the top) suggested, we’ll need to rethink ourselves.

One obvious approach is to ignore requests from your blog readers. That’s a 100% solution to saving time and improving productivity. However, in my opinion it’s not an effective approach for several reasons. Notwithstanding this approach will almost certainly damage the reputation of you and your blog. It would also reduce traffic as there’d be no valuable communication with your community. And to be blunt, that’s just plain stupid. If you’re not going to listen and communicate with your community, why even have a blog?

For blogs that are more established (having greater readership) one good way to respond to requests is to turn the request into a blog post. Blog about it! Doing so encourages your community to communicate and explore the ideas of the post. In turn this benefits the reader (who initiated the request) with valuable answers garnered from a multitude of perspectives and experience levels. This also benefits your blog in that the community in essence develops good content through discussion.

From an administrative aspect, another approach is to develop an FAQ page or adding content on your “Contact” page that explains what type of requests you field and which you don’t. This provides two immediate benefits. It reduces your time in responding to requests with a diplomatic “no” answer and it helps readers save time by only posting requests you do handle.

I’ve maintained better productivity using a “Request Response Template” for higher traffic blogs. This means I don’t have to craft a response from scratch. Almost all responses have more or less the same content with regards to salutations, introductions, conclusions, basic information, contact information, etc.  Depending on the blog, you can include links within that template which directs readers to appropriate information. Include your current status - Are you available to consult or not? Make sure you simply explain that you cannot always answer every request for personal assistance.

Keep in mind that canned responses are VERY OBVIOUS, as such it’s a good idea (a must!) to include relevant comments that are helpful. In many cases a link or two to your blog posts (that are relevant to the request) will be helpful and appreciated. Don’t misunderstand me, I strongly feel that all communication should address individuals on a personal level, that makes it a fine line between working with requests you do handle and those you do not.

Above all, be honest and up front, if the request for personal assistance is something you do not handle - Say so. This avoids reader frustration.

One method that I have found particularly helpful (and has turned readers into clients) is to invite those local to you for a face to face meeting. For example, I provide public seminars to local business people (about web site, marketing, promotion, hosting, etc.), if their request is related in some fashion to an upcoming seminar, I personally invite them to the seminar. If it’s not, I still invite them as it will afford me a few minutes to talk to them after the seminar.

One issue I think crucial (at least it is for my client), as a matter of fact it’s the crux of his phone call to me is that he did not want to provide paid consulting services for free. In this case, my response would not be built on top of my Request Response Template, rather it would be a personally crafted, targeted response. The following points should be covered for these types of issues:

• The reader’s request cannot be handle in a simple expedient manner.
• You need to spend significant time to deal with the personal assistance request as some research, planning or solution development, etc. is required.
• This is the type of consulting service that existing clients pay you for, and list some of the examples of your paid services.
• MAKE SURE you spend a bit of time clearly outlining the solid benefits your reader garners by paying for your services.
• Provide options if the reader is not in a position to render your full services.

While the volume of potential consulting jobs obtained from such requests is directly related to the traffic volume for your blog, I’d advise low volume blogs to be prepared for them, you never know when such opportunities might come your way.

In conclusion, if you get an excessive amount of requests that you simply cannot respond to, my perspective is that it’s a clear signal from the community, indicating what content they are interested it. Clearly note on your blog that you cannot possibly field personal assistance requests. and… Blog specifically about the requests with valuable information!

It visually explains why digital text (dynamic content - such as blogs) are among the tools best able to meet the needs of information exchange. How the web is no longer a static environment. Instead any successful web site needs to participate in the ever increasing social and data exchange aspects of promotion and traffic building (Web 2).

It shows us how the technology has changed and evolved.

Think your static web site is effectively representing your business and encouraging visitors? After this video, you may want to rethink your online strategy and business promotion. After all, a static web site is simply a brochure - Not too effective in building your business. The first time I saw this video, I learned a fair bit and did sit down and significantly updated my online presence and marketing strategy plans.

As a side note: One thing I found interesting is that previously assumed analytics suggested that older people are not Internet savvy. This is something I’ve heard from more than one client. Personally I don’t believe it as I know people over 80 that surf the net regularly including purchasing products and services on line, sending email, use web cams to communicate with their grandchildren as well as services such as Flickr, Digg, YouTube, Twitter and so on. (Personally, I think the notion of the elderly not being web savvy is a silly stereotype).

Think older people are not strong Internet users? Think again… According to Insurance Canada, people 65 years of age and older comprise 29% of Internet users in Canada for 2007. 29% is a significant number - And that’s just for personal, non-business use! According to Internet World Stats, Canada had 28 million users as of March 2008 (84.3% of our population). That would work out to about 8.12 million users aged 65 and older.

Sources:
http://www.insurance-canada.ca/market/canada/2008/eMarketer-Internet-User-Demographics-807.php
http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/ca.htm

It’s really teaching us that an effective site (Web 2.0) is about linking people. About people sharing, trading and collaborating. Isn’t that what build’s our businesses? You bet!

Here’s the video:

I’m taking a couple months reprieve from the seminar track as I’ve a fair bit of work to catch up on. Doing so also presents me with the time to develop my seminar track for the next year “Blogging to Grow Your Business”. While developing the content (and bouncing ideas off some of my seminar regulars) on of them challenged a chapter I working on. In particular was the issue that the success of a blog (for that matter a web site too), was NOT incumbent solely on quality, in-demand content. Several others also voiced similar issues, and it occurred to me that we’re comparing apples and oranges.

Most would agree that in the most basic terms we can appreciate that search engines find quality content attractive, thereby directing more traffic to the page containing such content. That may have been a more realistic perception for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but certainly not in today’s Social Web! Your online presence very much follows the general rules within the tangible world. Think about it… When I meet a prospective client in a brick & mortar environment, I need to be just as personable and professional as I am in my online blogging and web development environment.

The value and importance of networking does not end when we include online solutions (such as blogs) to grow our businesses. It’s the networking we do that in part that helps to ensure our blogs success. You could have all the content in the world, but are you really going to grow traffic if nobody knows about it?

Is it realistic to expect your sole source of traffic to be search engines? Of course not! The days of “Build it and they will come”, are long gone.

Needless to say, there were a flurry of email messages, so much so that I thought I’d post some answers.

First, lets break the issues down to the “features” and “benefits” issue. One of my mantras has always been:

“Benefits Sell, Features Don’t“

Think about it for a moment, all blogs have content -That’s a feature!

A blog that shows you how to save money or save time (for example), and thereby reach more people - Those are Benefits!

Which brings to mind the salient question (I think) all business owners should be asking themselves:

“What benefits can a blog provide my business?”

or

“If content is simply a feature and not the primary element of blog success, what’s in it for me?”

Subsequently this leads to some of the immediate questions that arose in our discussions, questions that I strongly feel are of the most basic surface benefits and do not really grasp the deeper concepts (which I’ll raise towards the end of this post).

• Where do I get traffic (readers)?
• Where do I get inbound links?
• How do I become visible? and so on…

It’s important for any business owner contemplating a blog to remember some of the basic aspects of business (and blogging) promotion:

• Design/Branding.
• Titles/Content.
• Interaction/Personality.
• SEO/Structure.
• Promotion/Marketing.

An aesthetically pleasing blog environment is one “surface” cornerstone. You could call it your packaging or “branding”. Your branding broadcasts a lot about you and your business. Blog branding directly reflects your business. If it looks horrible, that’s the message your sending to readers.

Titles are critical. Newspapers are masters at this. Think about it, when you look at a book, magazine or newspaper, the title is probably one of the first things you read. If the title captures interest, then readers will dig deeper into your content. Titles should try to include a call to action.

Interaction has always been a successful strategy. Using a blog to educate, inform, guide, demonstrate and so forth… is much the way successful business owners promote their operations. The same holds true in the virtual environment. Interaction shows that somebody is there to serve your clients.

SEO, if search engines know where your content is, what your most important content is and how to access it, this (among other SEO facets) goes a long way to helping search engine users (remember the focus should be on the people) find your most valuable content. The easier your blog is to navigate, the more likely readers can find the content they are looking for.

Promotion and marketing have always been important. Every business that has a blog is able to join the crowd. But, how do you get noticed in a crowd? You don’t. It’s important to bring to fruition the most important aspects that make your blog stand out and get noticed. Nobody is going to give you leadership, you have to earn it.

As I suggested, these are (in my opinion) some of the most common questions, the answers of which don’t really address the deeper aspects. Aspects that show us that it’s no longer content that’s the key to success, but rather a related web of elements.

In my experience, there are four intangible elements that contribute enormously to a blogs success. And arguably may be considered some of the most important elements!

1. Luck/Karma.
2. Charisma/Leadership.
3. Confidence/Trust.
4. Professionalism/Genuine.

Luck/Karma.

I kid you not! My other blog had several posts go viral. In one case (shortly after I launched the blog) it was sheer luck that a reader posted the link on Digg and that the Digg community moved the post to the front page. That truly was luck. (Update: I’ll blog about this later, but another aspect of good luck was during the launch of this blog, I lost all my content - But Google cache and Live cache returned copies to me).

But can we control luck? Can we make it work to our advantage? I think we can. While this could easily be a separate discussion altogether, I’d still suggest that one way to illicit good luck is to communicate effectively. Tell everyone what you need, plan your goals towards your desires, be optimistic and relax, doing so will allow you to approach any setbacks with a positive attitude. In turn this will help you to turn lemons into lemonade (as your mentality will already be in a positive zone).

Charisma/Leadership.

Participate in your community. Be the mover and shaker. Earn leadership through your insight and wisdom. Don’t micro-manage, rather stand back and look at the whole picture. Connect the people around you into a community and empower their participation. Your blog can be among the best tools to this end.

Confidence/Trust.

When you blog about a topic, mean what you say and follow through. Be genuine in your relations with readers. Always be professional. If you’re writing a controversial post, do so in a positive fashion, comments written with negative or combative language, do not build confidence in you or trust in your blog. Invite guests to contribute content to your blog, doing so goes a long way to building trust and ensuring confidence.

Professionalism/Genuine.

Impart your knowledge in a positive manner. It’s not what you know, but how you express it that helps build your blog success. I am by no stretch of the imagination an expert in online business promotion, network engineering, web development/coding or even Linux blogging. But I’ve had years of training and/or experience in these areas. In particular, my linux blog has taught me that some of the most valuable content on occasion comes from my readers!

Finally, I’d like to clarify again, I’m not suggesting that the value of content has fallen by the way side. Rather that more blogs are savvy to the issue of quality content. Therefore an area that can further a blog’s success is to focus on empowering the four intangeable elements to your fullest potential. Doing so, in my opinion, is one step towards becomming bloggersavvy!

I remember months earlier indicating that he should have content posted regularly and ensure he broadcasts his blog URL everywhere. For those curious, the blog is called Predictable is Preventable and was launched in January, 2008. During our chat, he indicated that there was not much commenting and it seemed that there was no return in blogging. Throughout the discussion, his comments consistently raised two key issues in one way or another:

• How long does it take for to start having constant readers and comments?
• It’s unmotivating to post something really informative and not any response.

I must admit, that these are in all likelihood a couple of the most common, and in many ways most difficult beginner issues to deal with. Think about it, you have a business operation running and it feels like launching a blog (to help promote the business), is starting from scratch and developing contacts all over again. In some ways it could be construed as such.

Personally, I encountered the same issues when I launched my Linux based blog. I had zero traffic and it seemed like I was writing posts for myself. I felt like I was the only one reading the content. Laughingly, I guess I was! Humour aside, I realized that traffic is only going to increase if I get out there and make some noise.

One immediate approach I took was to email almost everyone I knew, asking if they’d be interested in my blog. I included some excitement in my message as well as a note to pass the email on if they new anyone that would be interested in my niche blog. This did encourage some traffic, but I noticed it was one big spike and then a sharp drop. But… there was a small group of regular readers (but nowhere near the amount of visitors I would have liked to have had.

Another approach I took was to join several forums related to my blog as well as a few other online (related) communities. Posting reply’s to questions for help and including links back to my blog, garnered much better results! One thing I learned the hard way (actually, two things, now that I think of it) was:

1. When joining communities such as forums, wait a bit before posting links back to your blog. Joining and posting back links right away, looks very much like blog spam (and in some situations it is). Remember, it’s important to preserve the integrity of your blog, not have it relegated to spam status.
2. Also, if you’re going to post back links, make sure there is enough content to capture interest and repeat visitors! Or if not, then in the initial, stages make sure you post quality content every day. (This way new visitors are more likely to bookmark your blog and return; as they see new content keeps appearing).

The two activities above really helped to initiate growth. One thing I learned that was highly appreciated was answering peoples questions in forums (or on their blogs), and answering them WELL. Then posting a link to an in depth article exploring their questions and answering them even more. Needless to say, I already had the in depth post written and published before answering their questions and inviting them to read a full, in depth post on the matter. This combination worked great for my Linux blog. I spent about 2-3 hours each day interacting with various forums and other online communities to build traffic. If you are working, even 30 minutes or an hour a day will provide results. The point I’m trying to suggest is not so much the time you spend building your traffic, but rather that you do so consistently! If you can only spend 20 minutes a day or a couple hours a week, so be it. But do it consistently and without fail!

The growth of my blog became very organic, in the sense that people were passing various blog post links around to others. In one case I had very good fortune luck in that someone posted one of my articles on Digg and it ended up on the front page. The majority of visitors from Digg were not repeat visitors, but the exposure did garner several readers - More importantly however was the discovery that the post was featured on hundreds of other web sites and blogs that monitored what appeared on Digg’s front page. My traffic shot up to unbelievable numbers. And again, out of those, I garnered even more readers. Again, the organic growth issue became obvious as I saw people recommending my blog posts to others.

One important aspect, which I’ve been trying to express to my client is the need to keep posting new content. You don’t want your blog to become like a book, read it and put it away as there’s no more to read. Your blog must, to use the analogy, be a never ending story.

I think, in my client’s case, that motivation may be one issue. I know from my own experience, that you cannot motivate people. You can give them all the tools and do your best to reach out to them, but at the end of the day, we have to pick up those tools and use them ourselves, nobody can do that for us.

In some fashion I think he’s not sure what to post about. I went through a phase myself, where it was a labour to figure out what I was going to write about and then formulate ideas and a resulting post. I hated doing it and began to procrastinate - because it was hard work. Hard only because I made it that way! It was my own though process and attitude that created a negative blogging environment. I was able to enjoy blogging and provide better content when I wrote with the same excitement that I spoke. I wrote from me, my experiences, not about them.

On some level, I think that perhaps he’s not sure if his traffic is not at the level he wants because of his content or simply because the blog is too young (it’s not even a year old yet). I remember long discussions on Skype and via email, helping to massage some content. And I actually enjoyed that as I found he has a stronger grasp of some things than I thought. He has a bright intellect and is excited about his experiences. Reflecting this into your content is important. Remember you’re writing to interested people, not at them. Your interested in garnering their participation not their unresponsive attention. In his case (and I experience similar), perhaps he’s so focused on his work and the actual content that he’s too quick to judge his content as ineffective or substandard. I’ve been guilty of this myself and think the best approach is to ask those around you to proof read your pending post. Find out what they think about it… I don’t mean if they like it or not. I mean the really nitty gritty, the guts of the content, for example:

• Is it missing some key issue or concept you’ve not considered?
• Could it be improved by hitting some mark closer?
• Is it something that can really be discussed or is it just facts?
• Does it provide some specific value and impart that to the reader?
• Could there be more detail and less generalization?
• How genuine is the content, does it provide a fresh perspective?

The above thought are just some of the things proof readers help me with. Their opinions really count. Anyone can point out spelling mistakes, but it’s valuable input like this that’s going to help your blog grow. Sometimes what you hear will by great, dynamite! Other times not so much so.

In terms of his blog, I think one key to help grow it is to try taking a different approach. Look at his competitors, see what they are doing. Don’t be afraid to try something new. Try moving in that new direction for a bit and see where it goes. I often make suggestions to clients and I often hear all sorts of reasons why something cannot be done. Instead we should all be focusing on how we can do something. To further address the point, in the immortal words of Yoda:

“Try not. Do… or do not. There is no try”

While I may repeat this quote somewhat with tongue in cheek and a smile, it’s actually quite apt.

In conclusion, among the best ways to grow your blog is to write in a way that makes you satisfied with the result. For example, something that you can tell a client to visit and read for more information when they ask you a question. Never write with the intent to garner sales, advertising revenue, and so on; as this will translate into your content. Remember your state of mind always effects how you write, just as much as how people perceive you in the offline world. Growing a blog takes time, it’s like nature, you can’t rush it.

You can grow your blog in great part by:

• Self promotion.
• Having faith in yourself.
• Accepting constructive criticism.
• Asking for help.
• Help and educate people with your content.
• Hold confidence in your knowledge and abilities.
• Interact with your readers.

Well I’ve finally done it! I’ve launched a new blog!

This has been a long time coming, and I’ve still a ton of work to do on the design, graphics et al. However, it was imperative to at least get this blog launched and running.

For those of you who do not know me, I’m a web developer and hosting provider. I provide related services but I also provide advice and consultation services. One of my pet projects is conducting (free) web seminars that teach business owners how to launch web sites, market them, improve them, garner an understanding of the technical aspects of web sites and servers, etc.

You can find a bit more of my story from another blog I operate named Ubuntu Linux Help. Here’s the link ubuntulinuxhelp.com/why-i-quit-windows-and-switched-to-linux that will provide those interested, with a bit of information on my technical background.

The motivation for this blog is borne out of the excessive number of questions I receive about web site, blogging, web site promotion, video streaming, how to earn money and so forth. My vision is that this blog will contain that information in an easy to use site.