Last weekend in the UK we saw a further Google Panda/Farmer update and guess what?

The test websites that I manage which contain great original content or blogs have shown an improvement compared to the end of March when the update was first rolled out. OK it’s a mixed bunch really, when the SEO forums are reporting no improvements from users I’ve managed to at least get some good results.

Since the first update I’ve been shouting to the top of my voice telling clients to add a blog and keep writing, writing and do more writing till I’m red in the face. Well a lot of them took this advice on board and subsequently this afternoon I was faced with a deluge of phone calls asking for advice on setting up their blog’s.

So here are some tips on setting up your blog.

Software

Wordpress = Simples

Firstly, there’s only one real option here that’s WordPress. It’s free, it’s simple, and almost anyone can use it. You don’t need a degree in computer science, just a computer. Of course, if you really do get stuck there’s always ‘WordPress for Dummies‘ and a host of other books. Installing WordPress can be a bit technical, the easiest and simple way is to go to your control panel on your server and you may just find a WordPress installation wizard which takes less than a minute. For most people though I recommend you ask your developer to add WordPress to your website. Costs should start from around £200 and upwards. It’s money well spent otherwise I guarantee you’ll spend countless hours shouting and swearing at your computer and breaking your website (or computer) in the process.

Themes

One of the first questions people are asked to do, is to choose a theme. Well there’s 1,339 free themes and from personal experience I’d rather be choosing shades of paint in B & Q – it’s that tedious, soul destroying and confusing. Tell your developer to do their best to match your WordPress blog to the ‘look & feel’ of your website using the pre-installed style sheets, after all you want the blog to have a similar although slightly different look, so that should someone land on your blog from your main website they won’t be confused into thinking they’ve arrived someplace else unfamiliar. So ask your developer to match the colours and fonts and please please don’t forget to include your logo and navigation bars as part of the design, so people don’t get lost. Remember also to add a link to your blog from the navigation bar or menu that’s already on the main website.

Plugins

I’ve only got two free plugins I recommend you start off with. Google Analytics for WordPress which will allow you to combine your blog analytics with your website analytics and Google XML Sitemaps which will inform Google every time you add a new post to the blog. You can add more plugins later on but be careful, any addition or update could cause WordPress to crash.

Blogging

Now you’ve got your blog built, you’ll be wanting to add some great content to it. So what we have here is a quickie guide on how to start blogging. Firstly make your way to the admin area of WordPress. Your developer should have given you a log in username and password. Write it down and keep it safe.

• Start by adjusting your widgets. Go to Plugins > Widgets and edit the sidebar menu to include only ‘Recent Posts’, ‘Categories’ and ‘Archives’. That’s all you need for now.
• Next, by default there may be a page up already on the site – delete it by going to Pages > Pages and trash it.
• Optional – Next, go to Posts > Categories > Add New Category. Remember keep it simple – no more than 5 for now.
• Now you’re ready to start blogging. Go to Posts > Add New

When you’ve added your title and the contents of your post make sure you’ve allocated the post the correct category and click on ‘Preview’. A new window will open. If you like what you see click on ‘Publish’. Congratulations you’ve just posted to your blog.

Please remember only post content you’ve thought up and written yourself or been written by a copywriter and above all write for your readers not for the search engines. If you’re already suffering from writers block check out another post of mine.

Paul

Note: The above information is only for quick reference and Little Big Voice or Paul Keene cannot assume any responsibility if things go horribly wrong.

There are very few businesses that can manage their social media, unless they are a very large company with the resources at hand to get things streamlined and consistent.

If you are a small or medium sized business you may not have anyone (or rather not much time to give a staff member) to update your social media regularly.

Many companies over the past twelve months have actually set-up their social media presence only to let it go to waste when they couldn’t find the time to update it regularly enough.

What this means is that for some at least, there are blogs that have not been updated for an age, Twitter pages with nothing happening and a Facebook page that’s covered in virtual cobwebs through lack of use.

So how can you manage your social media and still run your business effectively?

The key word here is ‘streamline’ everything!  An experienced social media professional knows all the tricks and tips to help you with this and while you need to take care with who you use, a good professional will be both technically and strategically skilled to help you make the most of your social media presence and save you a lot of time and hassle.

Integrate

One major time saver is integration of social media.  Many small businesses don’t realise that a blog can be networked to update Facebook and that both can update Twitter, which if you think about it can save you a considerable amount of time.

Additionally, you may not know that many blogging platforms can be done via email and even your smart phone – meaning you can blog on the move, which means if you’ve had some integration done, you can effectively update things very quickly anywhere in the world.

You may also find some benefit to putting a small amount of budget in to having key worded blogs written or some social media management, so that you can better use the social media platforms that you run.

This can improve things like Search Engine Marketing results, general rankings and reach across the Internet itself.

While there are always things to do yourself, you can never beat the experience of someone who has done it a hundred times or more and who can make your 1 hour job take 2 minutes!

Have Purpose

Many people get stuck on the ‘purpose’ section of their social media.  Mostly because they want to try and understand ‘why’ they’re doing things.  Essentially you control what you put out and what you want to share, so it’s up to you to ensure you have a specific plan and purpose to what you’re doing.  If in doubt, ask yourself these questions:

Do I want to generate new leads?

Do  I want to increase web traffic?

Do I want to improve my SEO Rankings?

Do I want to share my knowledge?

Do I want to give my clients a platform to ask questions?

No doubt we haven’t covered everything here, but this should give you an idea as to how to approach the management of your social media, allowing you to figure out what you want to achieve with it all!

So, before leaving your social media applications looking like a deserted wasteland, spend some time thinking about what you want to do and how those applications can help you achieve it!

As always, we recommend that you find a good source of professional advice – particularly if you are looking at Social Media as a support structure for your SEO & Search Engine Marketing efforts!

Does Social Media have a hierarchy?

Many people want social media but get very daunted by the number of platforms, the content they may or may not need and generally feel it looks rather complicated.

While in essence Social Media is actually very simple, it is actually quite hard to get organised if you don’t know what you’re doing.

There are actually certain areas which form the building blocks for Social Media and each part of the puzzle has it’s place.  However, how do you work out what’s more important than another element?

In this blog, we aim to try and assist you in defining your social media and how it plays an important role in all areas of your online presence.  Therefore, if you want to work out how and why it’s relevant to Search Engine Marketing or why it’s relevant to PR, then this blog should help you.

So, as a small business you may have seen Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Flickr, Delicious or a number of other social media platforms and thought I definitely need them but I don’t know why.

The first piece of advice is to STOP!

This is because every social media process requires building and in the most simple terms, you cannot build a house without working out the foundations first!

Don’t tell yourself you need them all and panic about how and what to do once they’re all set-up.  People make a lot of mistakes through this method and it really means you only end up ‘resolving’ them later on.

A recent client tried to set-up their own social media and ended up with a Facebook group that couldn’t do what they wanted it to do, numerous other ‘Like’ pages and no hope of solving the mess until we came along.

Your Foundations

First we need to understand where to start and in your case it should most definitely be a blog.  There are a million reasons why this is the case, but for simplicity of understanding let’s stick to some great reasons:

• Great for Search Engine Marketing purposes
• Great for SEO and gaining better rankings
• Great for broadening your Internet footprint
• Great for solidifying your expertise within your field

A blog is the core of any social media marketing campaign because it allows you to organise all the rest, but still retain core control.

Next you need to get your RSS and XML feeds sorted out.  Read our previous blog on what this is and why it’s important but essentially:

• Great for increasing your Search Engine Rankings
• Great for generating website traffic
• Great for allowing people to get updates from  you regularly

Next you need to look at what people are saying about you.  This can be done in a number of ways and there are a good amount of places to get help, but one of the most popular ways is the Google tool which can be set to update you whenever someone mentions your name, company details or keywords for example.  This is best utilised as part of your Search Engine Marketing strategy so do ask your provider about this feature.

Social Bookmarking (again see our previous blog about this)  Tagging content and being part of some of the larger social bookmarking communities can provide an important part of your traffic driving strategy and is most definitely worth considering.

Next are your actual social networks themselves.  You may want to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You Tube, Flickr etc. And now you have your blog set-up you should be much better placed to work out what you want to use them for and why.

So you can see very easily why it’s important to forget about doing everything at once and to utilise a specific plan instead, because this will make managing everything a whole lot easier.

What next?

Once you’ve set it all up the next step is managing the content and streamlining your activities.  Little Big Voice can assist you with this on lots of levels, from blogging based content through to advice on how to integrate your blog to Facebook and Twitter, which will allow you more time to focus on your actual business.

Our next blog spends more time covering the management of your social media so do come back for updates!

Paul

I like many people suffer from writers block when writing my blog. I reckon this is due from my lack of reading good literature over the past few years. No longer do I sit down to a trusty book but I speed read through the tons of emails I get each day and once in a while I’ll read through some website’s forum that I find interesting and just maybe once a year I’ll read half a book on my iPad whilst on holiday.

Especially now with the Panda/Farmer update from Google it’s especially important to have content of substance – original, informative, fresh and written for your users and not the search engines. It’s all too easy to give up, but now with these updates it’s more important than ever to have great content on your website, and no longer will great links have the same dramatic effect they once did. Although they are still important they’ll need good content to make them work properly.

So, although I recommend using our in-house copywriter to clients, there’s still nothing better than writing the content yourself. After all, the copywriter isn’t going to have the same knowledge as you when it comes to writing about your subject matter and if you write it yourself you’re going to save some money.

Q. How do you get over writers block? A. Planning

Go back to basics and imagine you’re a potential client who has  just found your website on Google and are interested in buying one of your products or services.

Let’s say you have a website selling aquariums, fish food and other accessories. The aim of this blog will be to guide your future potential customers and build a rapport and a high level of trust between yourselves which will eventually lead to a purchase.

The important bit is to plan in advance the different sections of the blog, something like this:

• Types of aquarium
  • Tropical
  • Marine
  • Cold water
• Planning
  • Heating
  • Substrate
  • CO2
  • Decorations
  • Adding water
• Planting techniques
  • Background plants
  • Midground plants
  • Foreground plants
• Fish profiles
  • Choosing the first fish
  • Choosing the second fish
• Care and upkeep
  • Fish health
  • Routine maintenance

This is just an example of what can be achieved with a little thought and planning.

If you get stuck at this first level, by all means pick up a book on the subject and see how the contents have been laid out. Use this as a basis for your blog but please don’t copy the content!

As you come up with the subject matter, the content will flow. You’ll be amazed at how much knowledge you’ve accumulated and you’ll enjoy sharing it with your new found customers.

As Google loves content it’s always good to allow comments to be posted from your users but watch out for spam comments of individuals trying to post links in your forums (we’ll cover this in a separate post).

Also bear in mind that results from You Tube generally show up on the first or second pages of Google, so it would be great to have a short video on each section of the blog possibly getting you additional coverage on Google.

Paul