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Free Blogging Teleseminar!

January 17, 2011 By Beth 4 Comments

Opportunity Ahead

I am SUPER excited about the year 2011. I’ve got so many new exciting new projects and events in the works for this year. Most of them I’m not quite ready to share the details of just yet, but I can tell you about one BIG event that’s happening at the beginning of February!

I’m thrilled that I’m going to be the special guest of rock star business coach Tommi Wolfe of Wolfe Potential for a teleseminar called “How to Boost Business with a Wildly Successful Blog (The Easy Way!)” on Tuesday, February 1st at 8:00 PM Eastern. The teleseminar is going to cover everything you need to know about getting started with blogging the RIGHT way, right from the beginning. Registration details are right here.

Tommi Wolfe is known the “The Start-Up Expert”, and her specialty is helping new entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. You can learn more about what Tommi does by reading this great Q&A with her on her website. The best thing about working with Tommi? Every time I talk with her on the phone, I always feel like I can take on the world! She’s that great!

Whether you’ve wanted to start a blog for your business and you don’t know where to start, or you just started your business blog and you’re totally overwhelmed – this is the class for you!

Here’s what we’ll talk about on this hour-long call:

  • How to get started with blogging the CORRECT way, right from the very beginning. We’ll talk about how to pick a great domain name, choose a hosting company and pick the perfect customer-attracting blog niche.
  • The biggest mistakes most bloggers make when they’re just starting out, and how to avoid them. This can save you lots of time and money later!
  • The right tool to use for business blogging, and why – learn how to quickly and easily start your blog using the best possible blogging platform.
  • …and more!

This FREE teleseminar will be held on Tuesday, February 1st at 8:00 PM Eastern (7:00 PM Central, 6:00 PM Mountain, 5:00 PM Pacific). For more a more detailed description of what we’ll talk about, and for registration information, click here.

I really hope to have you on this exciting call!

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Free Teleseminars and Webinars, Teleseminars Tagged With: ,
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How to Install the New Facebook “Like” Button

July 18, 2010 By Beth 10 Comments

If you read blogs, you’ve probably been seeing a special little button lately.  It’s called the Facebook “Like” button, and it looks like this:

Why do you need to pay attention to this little button if you’re a blogger? Because Facebook can be an incredible source of traffic to your blog, if you play your cards right and integrate Facebook tools into your site.

Let’s talk about the two ways you can use the Like button –

1.  You can make a Like button available so that your readers can like/subscribe to your entire blog. Normally this button would appear in the sidebar of your site, most likely as a widget of some sort.  When a reader Likes your blog using this type of button, they are essentially subscribing to future updates of your blog, and new posts written by you will appear in that person’s Facebook feed. That can mean more traffic from you, because your new posts will appear in front of that reader in Facebook, rather than them having to return to your site to look for new posts.

Here’s how that widget would look in the sidebar of your site (this screenshot is from author Cathie Beck’s site)

2.  You can also create a Like button that appears at the footer of each post on your blog, so that your readers can Like individual posts. This Like action will appear on their Facebook profile, so that your reader’s Facebook friends will see your post in THEIR Facebook feeds.

Confused? Need an example?

Let’s say that you run a website called Dooce.com (we should all be so lucky, no?) and one of your readers (Beth) reads this post.

When Beth is done reading, she finds the “Like” button at the end of the post, and clicks it.

Once she has “liked” the post, this is what would appear on Beth’s Facebook profile:

All of Beth’s friends are going to see that she Liked this post – it’s going to show up in all of her friend’s Facebook feeds – so any friends of Beth’s might look at the post and say “Hey, that’s sounds interesting! Let’s click on that and see what this is all about.” They click on the live link and read your fabulous blog post. Viola! More traffic!

Typepad has published a tutorial on how to install both versions of the Like button (see links, below), and in that tutorial they mention that Typepad has seen a huge rise in traffic since they installed this feature a few weeks ago. If you’re a blogger and you haven’t installed a Like button, take a few minutes and do so now – or email these instructions to your tech guru and have her do it for you. You will see an increase in your traffic.

Here’s how to install it on the three big blogging platforms:

WordPress.org (self-hosted WordPress) plugin (you will need to install and activate this plugin)

Typepad instructions

Blogger instructions

If you are looking to grow your number of visitors this is a simple way to do it. And the best part is that you can literally “set it and forget it”. You can install this plugin or widget and then just go on with your blogging – no fuss, no muss, and a great source of ongoing traffic to your site.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Traffic Ideas Tagged With:
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Where’s Beth on the Web this Week

May 15, 2010 By Beth 7 Comments
"Lenny and the Squigtones"-1979 LP cover
Image via Wikipedia

In the last two weeks, I had two cool opportunities to hang out in places outside my own blog. Fun!  Here’s where you can find me -

I was asked to do a tech segment on a brand-new radio show called Boomer Alley. This new show is the brainchild of Marc Sotkin, the award-winning Executive producer and writer of Golden Girls and Laverne and Shirley. The show is aimed at – surprise! – Baby Boomers, and it addresses issues that are important for folks of that generation. Because many of my clients are Boomers and I had never been on a radio show (sweet!!) I was more than game to be on the show. With the help of producer Sharon Glassman, we did a cool segment on a WordPress plugin that helps bloggers be gutsy with their writing and publishing

Listen to the whole show (which is fantastic, by the way) – by clicking here. and pressing the “play” icon on their little audio player. My tech segment is at the very end, around the 38 minute mark.

The WordPress plugin that I refer to on the show is called Zemanta, and it can really help you beef up the content in your posts. You write the posts, and the Zemanta makes recommendations for links, images and videos you can add to make your post more interesting. For example, in this post, Zemanta suggested the links to Golden Girls and Laverne and Shirley, above, and it also went and found that totally awesome picture and Lenny and Sqiuggy, which I added in one click. It even added the attribute!  I’m in love with Zemanta – download the WordPress plugin here, or I understand they’ve got some sort of Firefox browser tool, too, which means you can likely use it with other blogging tools! I haven’t tried that out, though, so if you try it and it works for you – let me know here in the comments!

Also – I did  a guest post for a colleague of mine, Eliana Berlfein, who is a website designer. The post is called “Top Six Reasons Every Business Should Blog“. If you’re running a business and you’re on the fence, this is an important post for you to read!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Business Blogging Tagged With:
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Why Bloggers Should Use Feedburner

April 22, 2010 By Beth 6 Comments

Feedburner is a free online service that allows you to send you email updates from your blog. Anyone who is reading your blog can enter her email address (using an opt-in form on your blog), and once they’ve confirmed their sign-up, Feedburner will automatically email her your new posts every time you publish one.  Feedburner allow you not only to track how many email subscribers you’ve got, but it also tracks how many people subscribe to your blog using an RSS feed reader.

For an explanation of RSS feeds and why they’re important for bloggers, please download my special report – “7 Ways RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Can Help You as a Blogger”, as well as some other cool freebies from my library.

Why set up Feedburner?  Here’s a few reasons:

1.  Using Feedburner will assure that more readers consistently read your posts. If a reader signs up for email update, they are much more likely to read a post if it comes into her inbox than if they have to return to your blog to check for new posts. That increases your readership and gets you new fans.

2.  It’s a free, low-hassle way to get your mailing list started. You can use the email addresses of people who have signed up for your Feedburner list in other ways, including emailing them about promotions, new product announcements and events.  And when you’re ready to move to a more robust email marketing tool (my favorite is Aweber), you can easily import your Feedburner subscribers into that tool, too.

3.  Feedburner helps you track your readership. Use your Feedburner statistics in conjunction with another traffic tracker (Google Analytics is a great one) to find out how many people read your blog. Set goals for yourself – how about 1000 subscribers by the end of this year?? You can do it!

4.  It’s an automatic way for you to advertise every time you’ve put up a new post. I’m a fan of linking your blog to other email and social media tools, using these feed-based services. That way you don’t have to run all over the Internet yelling “New post! New post!” each time your publish something new. Feedburner sends out new posts automatically to all your email subscribers, so all you have to do is write and publish. Cool!

Ready to get started? Go to Feedburner, set up a username and password (or use a Google login if you already have one – Feedburner is now owned by the all-powerful world of Google). Then “burn” your new feed by entering the URL or the feed of your blog. You’ll want to visit the “Publicize” tab in FB after your intial burn…..that way you can turn on email subscription capability and grab the code for your new opt-in for so you can add it to your blog.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Tools Tagged With: ,
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Top Four Reasons to Get a Blogging Buddy

March 21, 2010 By Beth 3 Comments

Blogging Buddies on a Coffee BreakI’m an extrovert, so I think everything is more fun with other people.  But just in case you’re not, and you need to be convinced that getting a blogging buddy is a good idea, here are the best reasons why you should:

1. A blogging buddy will give you someone you can brainstorm with, and someone who can help you sort your through your ideas. I call my blogging buddies when I’m in or rut or I’ve completely lost my blogging direction. I also email them when I have a far-out idea for a post and I’m not sure how it would go over with my audience.

2. Your buddy can link to your best posts (and vice versa) and you’ll both benefit. It’s true – we link to people we like, whether it’s an “A-List” blogger or our best blogging friend who we go to coffee with every Friday morning. Links to your blog mean traffic and more rewards from Google.

3. Blogging with a buddy is FUN. I schedule regular content writing sessions with my blogging buddy. We sit in a coffee shop, write for a few hours, then go grab dinner. It’s a lot more fun than sitting at home staring at a blank page.

4. Your buddy can keep you from feeling overwhelmed. You’re gonna have tough days as a blogger – days when you feel like you want to quit.  Maybe you’re not getting enough traffic, or not enough comments, or not enough….satisfaction. if you’ve got someone on your side who knows why you’re blogging and what your goals are, it will make you feel better. I just read in Oprah Magazine about a really cool study published recently in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The study asked participants to stand at the base of a really steep hill and rate how hard they thought the hill would be to climb. People standing at the bottom with a friend consistently rated the ascent to be less steep compared to those standing solo. (Side note – this study can teach us huge lessons not only in blogging, but IN LIFE, my dear readers!!). Interestingly, the longer the friends had known each other, the less steep they rated the hill. So find those blogging buddies and HOLD ON TO THEM.

Convinced? Great. Look for my post later this week on the qualities you should look for in a good blogging buddy.  In the meantime, start looking around for possible friends to add to your blogging support network.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Writing Content Tagged With: ,
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An New SEO Tool for WordPress

March 13, 2010 By Beth 5 Comments

I’ve just discovered an amazing new Search Engine Optimization tool for WordPress. It’s called Scribe, and in my opinion it’s a game-changer when it comes to optimizing your blog posts for search engines.

To use Scribe, right now you need to be using self-hosted WordPress, but I understand they are developing another version, including a very-soon-to-be-released web-based version that you can use with any blogging tool.

If you’d like to try it right now and you’re using WordPress, here’s how it works -

1.  Sign up for an account with Scribe (they have a free trial), then install the Scribe plug-in on your WordPress blog.  Don’t forget to activate it in the plug-ins area in your WordPress dashboard.

2. Pick a blog post (or static page) that you think could use a little SEO help.

3. Write a page title and descriptions for your post, using the All-in-One SEO Pack WordPress plug-in.  Don’t have it? Get it here.

4. In the upper right corner of your post’s Compose screen, you’ll see a little box that looks like the image on the right. Click on the blue Analyze button and get ready for some magic.

Scribe will take a few minutes to analyze your page content, page title and page description.  Once it’s finished its analysis, you’ll see a pop-up box that gives you a ton of information on how to maximize the search engine results for that post.

5. This pop-up box gives you specific recommendations for how to change you content, add hyperlinks, modify tags, and maximize keyword usage.  It even gives you a rating on how you did – 100% if you a fantastic job, lower percentages if you’ve got some work to do. Take the recommendations and implement them! This advice does you no good if you don’t put it to use!

6. Repeat this process for more posts and pages – you get a certain number of Scribe evaluations with each level of service, so you can buy the level that’s right for you.

Click here to find out more about Scribe.

NOTE – You may not be ready for Scribe right now.  Or you may not be a WordPress user right now. Either way, if you need a more general description of how to tackle the Search Engine Optimization world, I highly recommend Naomi Dunford of Ittybiz.  She’s got a great product called Ninja SEO School that I think it an excellent introduction to SEO. It’s not overwhelming, she’s a great teacher, and she’s funny, to boot.

Full disclosure – I am an affiliate for both of these products, but I truly would recommend them both even if I wasn’t! I know everyone says that, honest to goodness, it’s true. :)

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Tools, Wordpress Tagged With:
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How to Publish Your Blog Posts to Facebook (automatically)

January 5, 2010 By Beth 11 Comments

I’ve had a lot of questions recently regarding publishing blog posts to Facebook. It’s quick and easy to connect your blog to your Facebook profile so that every time you publish a new blog post, it will appear on your Facebook profile automatically (and will therefore be visible to all of your Facebook friends).  This saves a lot of time and effort – you don’t have to re-post your new content every time you publish!

Here’s how to do it:

1.  Log into your Facebook account.

2.  Go to the lower left hand corner of your screen, where there’s a little Facebook logo and the word “Applications”.  Click on the word Applications.  A big menu of all of your FB applications will pop up.

3.  Go to “Notes”.

4.  You’ll be sent to a screen that says “My Friends’ Notes”.  On the right side of the screen you’ll see a box that says “Notes Settings”.

5.  In that box, click on “Import a Blog”.

6.   You will then be sent to a screen that says “Import a Blog”.

7.  Enter the full URL (including the http://) of your blog (or the feed of your blog, if you use a Feedburner feed) in the Web URL field.

8.  Check the box beneath the URL field to acknowledge that the content is yours.

9.  Then click on “Start Importing”.

10.  Facebook will show you a Preview of the content that it thinks it should publish.  Click on the “Confirm Import” button on the right side of the screen to confirm the import process.

You’re done! Facebook will now pull your most recent blog posts into your profile (it may import several at one time at the beginning).  Then from now on, Facebook will check the RSS feed of your blog automatically every 2-3 hours.  If you’ve written a new blog post, if will import it automatically into your profile as a Note.

Please note – You may only import one blog at a time using this process, so if you’ve got multiple blogs, you’ll need to pick one.

Another note – You can use this same process to import your blog into a Facebook Page (if you have one for your business).

If you would like to delete a post from the Notes area once it’s been imported, just go to Applications > Notes, then hit the “My Notes” link close to the top of the screen.  There will be delete button next to the title of each Note.

Have fun, and happy posting!

UPDATE:  Facebook has changes it’s NOTES process since this post was published, and you may need to look in a different place to find the Import settings. If you’ve checked Facebook help and are still stuck, please contact me and I’ll help you out.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Social Media Tagged With:
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What You Need to Know About Backing Up Your Blog

November 25, 2009 By Beth 7 Comments

I recently heard a horror story about a blogger whose hosting company went through some sort of catastrophic failure, and the blogger lost her entire blog – all the posts, comments, photos – the whole shebang.  This hosting company messed up BIG time.  This should never happen to anyone. However, there are ways to protect yourself against this kind of blogging disaster (or a hacking attempt).  The key is to back up your blog at regular intervals so that if something awful happens, you’ll have a copy of your blog to restore.

For hosted WordPress (WordPress.com) users, you can do a backup of your whole blog by going to Tools => Export in your WordPress.com blog dashboard. Then click on “Download Export File”. That will give you the backup of your content (posts, pages, authors, etc).

For anyone using the self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org), I recommend installing this plug-in, which will do an automatic daily, weekly or monthly back-up of your database.  Once the plug-in is installed and activated, go to Tools > Backup to configure the options for when you want to have the back-up done.  It gives you the option to have the back-up mailed to you automatically, which I think is pretty slick.

In Blogger, you can do an export of your blog (which is also useful is you want to switch to WordPress, not that I’m HINTING or anything) by going to Settings > Blog Tools > Export Blog.

If you’re a Typepad blogger, go to “Settings” once you’ve clicked on the blog you want to back up, then click on “Import/Export” > Export.

If you’re using another blogging tool, ask tech support or do a quick Google search for the words “export” or “Backup” and your blogging tool name, and you’ll likely find a way to do a backup.

Once you’ve run an export or back up and you have the exported file, make sure to save it somewhere safe (preferably on an external hard drive, if possible).  I recommend backing up about once a week.  That way if something awful happens, you never lose more than one week’s worth of posts.

Something else to think about – don’t use a fly-by-night hosting company if you’re blogging with a self-hosting blogging tool like WordPress.org.  I recommend Bluehost – they are incredibly reliable and very WordPress-friendly.  Yes, that is an affiliate link, but I use Bluehost myself and love them, especially their very knowledgable customer service, which has saved my butt more than once when I’m backed myself into some weird technical corner.  :)

This year, we should all be thankful for blogs that don’t disappear!  Do your backups!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Tools, Typepad, Wordpress
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Business Blogs Get More Traffic Than Regular Websites

August 24, 2009 By Beth 1 Comment

You're probably already heard the message – multiple times, from many sources -  that your business needs a blog.  You may have even started one for your business.  If so, congrats!  You're taken a big step in marketing yourself BETTER and SMARTER online.  But if you haven't started a blog for your business, or you have any nagging doubts about whether your blog is doing your business any real, measurable good – then you'll need to read this recent survey by the folks at HubSpot. 

They looked at data from over 1,500 business websites – those that included blogs as part of their sites, and those that didn't – and the results of their inquiry clearly indicated that companies that blog get more traffic, have more indexed web pages, and have more inbound links than companies who don't blog.  

"The data was crystal clear: Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:

  • 55% more visitors
  • 97% more inbound links
  • 434% more indexed pages"

Read the full text of the article, which includes graphs and more information on why you want more visitors, inbound links and indexed pages on your site, here. 

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Weblogs
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What Bloggers Can Learn from Viral Videos

August 3, 2009 By Beth 4 Comments

An unconventional wedding video, featuring the wedding party dancing down the aisle to a popular hip hop song (Chris Brown’s “Forever”) has been getting a lot of attention on the Internet and in traditional media lately.  The video itself shows the entire bridal party of the Minnesota couple’s wedding doing a choreographed routine down the aisle.  The video lasts for over five minutes and is riveting from start to finish.

The Minnesota couple, Jill and Kevin Heinz, first published the video on YouTube on July 19, 2009.  By the time I saw it on July 23 (a friend of mine sent it to me on Facebook), it was up to 300,000 views.  Within days, it passed one million views and the couple (and their dancing friends) were featured on the Today show to talk about their famous processional dance and the explosion of the video’s popularity around the world. 

As of the time of this writing, the video has racked up over 14.6 million views. 

There is a specific reason that some videos on YouTube go viral – meaning that they gain widespread popularity through Internet sharing, usually through email, blogs and other media sharing websites.

That reason is JOY. 

In videos – as well as in real life – People relate to other people when they are at their best – whether they’re excelling at a sport, graduating from college, snuggling a brand new baby, or dancing down the aisle on their wedding day. When someone witnesses moments of true joy seen on video, they want to spread the joy by passing the video around.  Viral videos become popular simply because they are being passed around, just like a cold or flu germ, except that the passing is done via email, Facebook, blogs or Twitter.  The Minnesota “Forever” wedding video is a classic example.  People take this path – see joy, revel in that joy, and pass it on.  Beautiful.

The lesson bloggers can take from the huge popularity of these videos is this – You will attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.  When you’re writing blog posts, write about what you love, rather than what you hate.  Write about someone or something that thrills you, excites you, makes you light up.  If you’re passionate about something, and if you’re writing about something that’s unique (or you’re writing about it in a unique way) it will resonate with people.  With any luck, people will start to pass it around and link to it, which will lead to more traffic, more loyal readers and subscribers, and a bigger potential audience.

More great examples of joyful, passionate writing and film in social media (in blogs and viral videos):

Do you have favorite videos or blogs that come from a place of joy? I'd love to hear about them!

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Content
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