Using blogs, photo websites and social media to help your business

THE days of a five page website being put up on the internet to promote your business are long gone, search engines and people expect a little more nowadays. But updating a website can still be quite a challenge often taking a few weeks to change a page or add a new photograph. Thankfully websites such as Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook and many others now make it easier to get your work in front of potential clients and new readers. If you want to read up on some hints and tips then I'd follow the writing of a pal of mine Robin Hamman who is currently involved with the Big Green Challenge, which aims to reduce CO2 production in communities. Part of his brief is to highlight how many of the new tools of the internet can be used to connect people and keep other informed of the work and projects being undertaken. Through the Big Green Challenge Blog he has already explained how using tools like blogs can help and recently wrote about using Flickr, something that could prove very useful for some members of the network. I'll pop the latest stories into the left hand column of the front page of the network so you can keep up to date, or if you are comfortable with RSS feeds just subscribe to it.

Hi Niall,

Couple of quick observations on the blog, the first of which is can you make the title you give individual stories feature as the title of the web page itself.

I see you are using the Share button which is a good option, but try to place it at the end of the piece as you want people to read your article and then think 'I'll share this' they won't do this with the button at the top of the page.

Also on individual article pages can you provide a second column which includes your most recent stories.

And provide a newsletter option so that people get a notification of new stories, the service offered by Feedburner is useful as all you need to do is provide it with your RSS feed.

Finally, I'd drop the Google Adsense adverts, you need large amounts of readers to make a success of this and if you look you may start promoting competitors.

Everything you do should be aimed at helping new and existing readers find out more about your knowledge and experience - useful hints, tips, ideas and links will see people come back for more and tell their friends.

Hope this helps,
Craig

"Throttle screws and move the governor spring across a hole.Takes less than five minutes. Can't say I have had any complaints about noise but then again I have customers I have worked for for years and never even met!"

Hi AllWhat are member's experiences of magnetic signage gor vans. I appreciate that the name and nature of the business will be free advertising but the flip side of this is advertising a cache of gardening tools available to plunder. Will this…

"Thanks Adam, an interesting counter-argument! 2 questions- 1) is this just the throttle-stop screw, and 2) are they then very noisy? We do seem to have some very noise-averse customers!"

Comments

PRO

Craig McGinty February 9, 2009 at 3:31pm

Hi Niall,

Couple of quick observations on the blog, the first of which is can you make the title you give individual stories feature as the title of the web page itself.

I see you are using the Share button which is a good option, but try to place it at the end of the piece as you want people to read your article and then think 'I'll share this' they won't do this with the button at the top of the page.

Also on individual article pages can you provide a second column which includes your most recent stories.

And provide a newsletter option so that people get a notification of new stories, the service offered by Feedburner is useful as all you need to do is provide it with your RSS feed.

Finally, I'd drop the Google Adsense adverts, you need large amounts of readers to make a success of this and if you look you may start promoting competitors.

Everything you do should be aimed at helping new and existing readers find out more about your knowledge and experience - useful hints, tips, ideas and links will see people come back for more and tell their friends.

Hope this helps,
Craig
PRO

Craig McGinty February 10, 2009 at 4:54pm

Hi Jonathan,

I hope it's not too late, either you or the person doing the site should take a look at this guide from Google:

Google's SEO starter guide

At least make sure as many of these points are ticked off on your new website.

All the best,
Craig