Alice Elliott's blogblogs | Alice Elliott's blog

New-style online advertising will still annoy?

Alice — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:28:58 +0000

It’s a very common occurrence to come across advertising on blogs. Usually it’s the way these publications can keep the information they post free from charge, as the revenue generated helps pay for the expenses incurred.

But do you actually notice them? I certainly don’t. I’ve learned to gloss over them to find the information I want, a bit like the way I scan tweets in Twitter to find the ones that interest me the most.

To overcome this, advertisers have had to think of a way to get people to notice their adverts. Being extra clever with the headlines, putting animation in to disengage your attention, including hard to resist call to actions designed to pull even the hardened punter, all these are failing to get results.

So now the newest idea that’s come up is 30 second long TV-style adverts. These will be much harder to ignore, even pop-up ads. How would you respond to a short film popping up within the blog you were trying to read? Would you really stop, down tools, and watch these phenomena?

Another concept put forward by internet marketers is that even though these adverts will cost more, they will have a higher profile with a huger impact, thus becoming more effective and cost-worthy. The idea is that in the long run these ads will supercede the smaller static versions, who will gradually diminish in their intensity and numbers.

Is this a good idea? After the trial of 5 weeks on 15 carefully chosen websites, will this catch on? Will we welcome this style of advertising with open arms, or will we rue the development of technology and yearn for the old style advertising methods?

Which design elements are vital for a blog?

Alice — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 21:42:12 +0000

Want to know what you should include on your blog to make it successful?

Read this post on my blogging blog to find out!

How to do marketing for free

Alice — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:00:21 +0000

This is a good subject for start-ups and very small businesses who don’t have a large budget to work with..

The first free marketing method is networking. Go to as many meetings as possible, particularly the free events or those that don’t require a big entrance fee. But to make these successful you must arm yourself with a good pitch, both 10 and 60 second versions, the first to grab attention to yourself, and the second if you get a chance to address the whole room. If you can create something that is different, easily understandable, poignant and relevant to your listeners’ needs, then you have a head start above many others.

It is important to get yourself as visible as possible in the business world. There are two possibilities: blogging and social networking group pages. It is very easy to create a free blog, and social networking sites allow you to create groups or fanpages which you can devote to your business. In these you must regularly post up information about your business, and then, as with the blog, use RSS feeds to inform your followers of your new posts, or email through the social networking system to your followers that you have recently contributed new material for them to read.

And then there’s Twitter, equally free, which is an excellent way to promote your business, not forgetting that you can feed your blog to it, and now your posts can be automatically replicated on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Writing articles and publishing them around the net is another way to spread your expertise. Make sure the resource boxes direct the reader back to your website, blog or social networking profile pages, so they can find out more about you. Take advantage of keywords to improve your search engine optimisation, and careful attention to the headlines and first paragraph will increase the likelihood of a response.

If you do have a website, get as many links back to it as possible from other websites and web directories. The more high profile the link source, the more respect search engines give your website, not to mention providing more portals for the spiders to crawl over your site and report back pages for indexing.

Create a good signature for your emails, to publicise your website, blog and social networking profiles. Don’t forget that the space at the bottom of your communication is just waiting to be filled with promotional written material and links, and everybody you write to will get a chance to see them.

What 3 elements make up SEO?

Alice — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:30:33 +0000

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the natural or organic method of getting your website placed higher in the search engines, as opposed to paying for online advertising.

As a result it is a task that is never ending, always requiring you to be one step ahead of your competitors, and any successes tend to be short lived, as Google responds to all new material that is posted online, and it is always the latest contributions that are indexed at the top.

But it is a process that should not be ignored. Even if your website or latest blog post reaches its desired placing for a short time, it has got there, and who knows will look at it or read it while it resides in its lofty position. The more times you manage to attain this prize, the higher the chances of recognition, acknowledgement and conversion through response.

To explain simply, SEO work on three main elements: new content, links and keywords. I know all SEO experts out there will be saying ‘Oh, but you’ve forgotten this element’, and of course they’re right, as experts they should have many tricks up their sleeves to attain the final goal: get as high as you can in Google. But if you understand these three elements, there is no reason why anybody can’t give it a try.

New Content: search engines rely on their spiders: mathematically driven robots that ‘crawl’ the net looking for new material that has been posted. Once found, they feed greedily on it before passing it onto their master, the search engine, to be indexed. If your website or blog, especially the blog, has regularly published new content, it stands a better chance of being placed higher than any old material from your competitors.

Links: spiders need to have a method of entering and leaving your website or blog. Think of links being the doors or portals spiders use to find new content. Incoming links allow spiders to enter and feed, and outgoing links (especially if they are relevant to the content and final destination) will enable them to leave and visit other suitable sites, giving you brownie points as they do so.

Keywords: relevance is vital for spiders to work effectively. Keywords should be relevant to the content, destinations of links, and popularity of searches, eg what people are searching for at that moment. It would be wise therefore to properly research suitable keywords that are not only popular but truly reflect your new material and business. It’s simply like a game of snap, and the best results are attained through correct recognition of a match!

Now that you know these three elements, take them into consideration next time you post up something new on the net.

Learn how to link in to LinkedIn

Alice — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:34:07 +0000

Here’s just a small visual e-course I quickly compiled to demonstrate how easy it is to submit articles into groups in LinkedIn:

http://www.designyourmarketing.co.uk/How to create submissions in the BinB LinkedIn group.pdf

Let me know if it helps to make it easier to contribute. The more activity there is in these groups, the more there is to read, the more promotion members can make, the more new material there is for the internet spiders, and the more interaction from members also contributes to search engine optimisation.

So how about it – go on, give it a go!

Close your websites doors before someone gets in

Alice — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:19:42 +0000

On 23 July 2009 my website was hacked into.

The result was that some malware was put into the code of my theme of my website. This activated links to hundreds of pornographic sites whenever I uploaded new material.

Recently I have been quite busy uploading new pages about my blogging beginners self-help e-courses, so all my activities had been blasting off all this pornographic stuff left right and centre throughout the net.

I do have a wonderful brother who is a wizard in website programming, and he worked his magic behind the scenes, locating and removing the malware. Let’s just hope it doesn’t have secondary programming to reappear again later.

Meanwhile I have tried to submit my website for reconsideration by Google. I have contacted my server and have closed all my FTP access (which I will have to temporarily open every time I want to upload something). That was the back door that was wide open and allowed the hacker in.

So check all the portals of your website to make sure they are secure. Change all your passwords to everything regularly and use combinations of letters, numbers and punctuation to make them stronger.

Keep an eye out for anything suspicious or out of the ordinary with your website. This malware was totally invisible on my website, so it was the fact that I couldn’t see my theme that alerted me that something was wrong, but only after all the damage had been done.

How is a blog post like a chocolate muffin?

Alice — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:30:47 +0000

Let’s bake some muffins (the American ones that resemble large cup cakes) and compare the process to writing a blog post.

First, gather together the necessary equipment and ingredients. You will need a bowl, a saucepan, cooking scales, a bar of chocolate, flour, butter and sugar, an egg, vanilla essence and chocolate drops, muffin cases, a baking tray, an oven, some hungry people, and a recipe book.

Your bowl represents your blog’s posting page. It’s empty, and needs the ingredients to be put in it to make your muffins. Likewise your edit post page needs some post material to be written into it.

The idea for your post is like deciding what flavour your muffins should be. It’s best to choose a subject that everybody will want to read, so we have chosen chocolate as this is usually a favourite. Melt your chocolate in a saucepan.

Now weigh out your flour, or the words of your post. This is the bulk of the final product. But other ingredients need to be added, as flour alone won’t make a muffin.

But before you add the flour to your bowl, you must cream together the butter and sugar. This mixture represents the headline or title of your post, as it needs to be done or thought of first. It can be hard work to create the correct consistency, but it will be worth it.

Add a beaten egg to the mixture, or check that the headline has become a suitable permalink or URL for your post, and doesn’t read just as a page number. The permalink is important for search engine optimisation, to allow the mixture to rise during cooking, so it is a good idea to get it right.

Now you enhance the flavour of your muffin mixture with vanilla essence and chocolate drops (which represents the tags or keywords of your post). These will transform your muffins into tasty double chocolate samples rather than just ordinary chocolate ones.

Now you fold the flour into the mixture, or write the words with all the elements included above. Remember to add the melted chocolate (or retain the relevance of your post), or your muffins won’t turn out as expected.

Then spoon the mixture into your muffin cases, so they retain their shape and cook better on the baking tray. This is the equivalent of allocating your post to its category or topic page.

Now you need to publish your post, or cook your muffins in the oven. Mmmm, wonderful chocolatety smells! Once the time is up, they should be ready to be devoured by hungry readers.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the baker’s shop. If you supply a baker’s shop to sell your muffins, more people who pass by or visit the shop will get a chance to buy and eat them. And if the shop provides a delivery service, regular customers will receive half a dozen as soon as they are baked. This is the equivalent of RSS feeding and subscribing your newly published posts.

And the last item is my recipe book, or blogging pages, where you can learn more about blogs and how to create them.

To comment or not to comment, it’s all about interaction

Alice — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:00:43 +0000

One of the aspects of a blog is that it is interactive. This means readers are able to contribute to your blog if they have something to say. Blogging programmes automatically add an area after posts where readers can add their point of view. The ability to comment is also part of the phenomenon Web2.0, which is about interaction on the web.

So, what is special about blogs and commenting? Ordinary websites don’t have areas to put your point across, unless it’s a form to leave your details or send an email. Therefore what you have written is not automatically showed to you afterward for others to read, something that naturally occurs on a blog (unless the blog’s administrator wants to moderate your comment first, to make sure it isn’t spam).

But why should you comment on blogs? Apart from sharing your opinions, your comment may increase the value of the blog post, making it more interest to other readers. The author may also be inclined to respond, and starting a conversation – all adding to the entertainment factor.

Another thing to note, comments are viewed by the search engine spiders as new material, so the more interaction, the more the blog post goes up the search engines.

Comments can vary in content, as their authors can agree or disagree with the topic of the post. As long as you continue to be polite and forthcoming, and your contribution is relevant and resourceful, any comment is good. Sometimes comments lead onto other blog posts, especially if backed up by links. As spiders thrive on links, there are opportunities for comment authors to leave their details.

How do you induce a comment? Simply ask for one, as sometimes it won’t occur to the reader to leave one otherwise. Positioning a question at the bottom of your post may also encourage a response, as well as controversial subject matter. Those who comment are usually used to interaction on the net, and are likely to be avid social networkers, but anything that stimulates a reader to take action is advantageous.

Why is it good to comment? If you want to find your way in your chosen field, visit as many relevant blogs and leave a comment where you can. Then you will begin to get noticed by other bloggers and blog readers, and commenting will also enable you to link back to your blog or website, thus increasing your visitor rate. If you get a name for yourself by leaving good quality comments, visitors are more likely to visit to read your articles, subscribe to your blog and even leave comments themselves.

RSS simply explained

Alice — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 09:00:26 +0000

When I asked for feedback on what people wanted to know about blogs and blogging, many of them wanted to know about RSS. The main question being what is RSS?

So here is an explanation of those who do not know:

RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is easily recognisable through the orange square icon found at the top of most blogs’ sidebars.

It is like a subscription service, enabling your followers to receive any new material you’ve written as soon as it’s published. It saves you time and makes it easy for you to keep up with new stuff without having to search all your favourite blogs for it.

Think of it like subscribing to a magazine: the new post (or message) gets delivered straight to you, either via email into your in-box, or into search engine readers if you’ve subscribed via that method.

A search engine reader provides pages with links to newly available posts, or individual ‘cookies’ on the search engine homepage which lists the last three posts of that blog through headline links.

Apart from allowing your followers to keep track of your new material, RSS also has other uses, mainly through social media.

When you publish a new blog post, it can be ‘fed’ into your social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter. This means that each new message appears as a link automatically in these sites. The RSS feed delivers your new content in this format for your followers to read.

In Facebook the whole post is published in the Notes pages, and your Homepage or Status page shows the headline link (known as a permalink) with perhaps the first few lines of the post as a taster.

In Twitter your post is listed as the title and the first few words, followed by a tinyurl (or reduced link) to the blog post. As a Twitter message uses only 140 characters, there will not be room for the whole permalink, so various methods are used to shorten it.

RSS is important if you wish to increase your readership or encourage more interest from search engines. It is a piece of software that encourages the search engine spiders to follow your blog, and automatically spreads your news throughout the web. Without it your blog would appear lifeless as only those who are invited would get a chance to read it, and only if they bothered to visit it regularly. RSS automatically delivers your messages without effort, saves time and encourages a new readership, especially through social media.

If you want to find out how to include RSS into your blog, I have written a blogging visual e-course on the subject, called “Setting up a RSS feed = how to set up RSS feed so others can follow your blog posts”. You can view it from my blogging pages, and will be available to buy, along with the other e-courses, from September, so watch this space!

Alice Elliott of Design Your Marketing has created a series of visual e-courses to help you set up and maintain a blog from WordPress.com. They are designed to take you through the blogging journey either completely from the beginning, or to allow you to dip into those areas you are unsure of, or would like to know more. They should be ready to purchase from September 2009.

How are blogging and teeth similar?

Alice — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:30:36 +0000

Blogging as like flossing your teeth, you need do it fairly regularly to maintain your oral hygiene (or marketing awareness). It doesn’t need to be done everyday like brushing your teeth (or working on your marketing strategy), but you need to keep it up if you want a nice smile (or well marketed business).

Nobody likes looking at yellow teeth (neglected blog) or being subjected to bad breath (badly composed posts). Fluoride in your toothpaste (sharing your expertise) will encourage a broad smile (widely promoting your business) which will attract friends (more customers).

Your body, like your blog, needs good nutrition (interesting and valuable content) to result in a healthy disposition (frequently read blog). And regular exercise (internet research) will help you find suitable material, as both stimulate the brain!