This week Holey Associates, an architectural firm headquartered in San Francisco, launched their Web site.
"Holey Associates creates great places to work by researching and designing innovative spaces that support companies, organizations and individuals all over the world."
Their clients include Apple Computer, America Online, and Citicorp, to name a few.
The site was beautifully designed by Karyn Nelson Design and soundly developed by Maine Web developers flyte new media.
Today our friend and client, parenting expert Nancy Samalin, was on MSNBC talking about raising children who aren’t spoiled brats.
I wish I had posted about this before she was on, but at least I can point you to the page on MSNBC entitled Is Your Kid a Spoiled Brat? Check Out These Tips. There’s also some video, but being that this is an MSNBC site, and being that I’m on a Mac, I couldn’t watch it.
If you want to get some more parenting advice on raising children without spoiling, positive discipline that works and dealing with sibling rivalry, be sure to check out Nancy’s parenting Web site. She’s also a nationally recognized speaker on parenting issues, you know, just in case you were looking for one.
Last night I was tipped off to an essential blog-promoting resource. It’s a list, put together by Robin Good, called the Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites.
Originally it was called the RSSTop55, but now the list tops out at 119 resources, and growing.
It has links to all the most important blog directories and places to submit your RSS feed. It would probably take days to submit your site to all of them, but you can start at the top and work your way down over time.
This reminds me of Web marketing and promotion back in the early 90′s. It was easy to get listed in Yahoo’s directory back then. Basically, you built a site and submitted it to the appropriate category in Yahoo. You got in. It didn’t cost anything. Then it cost a one-time fee of $299. Then it became a yearly fee of $299.
Inflation, I guess.
Well, I think it’s the late nineties for blogs. Right now it’s free and easy to get listed in these directories. However, in a few years, as these directories look for ways to make money, they’ll start charging you.
If you have a blog, start submitting your site to directories today! By the time you get through this list these directories will probably be charging your competition!
FeedBurner is another great tool to promote your blog. It allows you to generate feeds through FeedBurner NewsGator, My Yahoo and My MSN.
<Aside>
BTW, I’m not sure if it’s a Mac-bashing thing, but how much does My MSN suck? I’ve checked it three times and twice my feed comes up as "Content unavailable. Content is temporarily unavailable or may no longer exist." Under "This Day In History" My MSN lists…nothing. Must have always been a very slow news day. Plus, organizing the page is a pain compared to how easily I set up My Yahoo. But, I digress.
</Aside.>
It also allows you to create some very cool tools, including an animated gif of your five most recent posts.
Setting up buttons, or "chicklets," from Feedburner is a snap.
Start by visiting the Feedburner home page. Enter in your RSS or Atom feed URL into the field and hit submit. (You can get this by right clicking on the "Syndicate this site (XML)" link on TypePad, or the equivalent.)
On the following page you can choose from a number of different options to enhance your feed, such as making it work in any news reader or making it more browser-friendly.
You can add Amazon Affiliate links to your feed. You can also make your feed friendly for PodCasting, insert a promotion image or logo, or apply a Creative Commons license to your feed. The list goes on….Choose what you like and click to continue.
On the following page you’ll be asked to create a free account at FeedBurner, which will allow you to edit your feed and create your chicklets.
As with NewsGator, you’ll need access to your blog code to add the chicklets to the columns on your blog. This will require the Advanced or Pro level at TypePad.
Select which chicklet you like and copy and paste the appropriate HTML. Rinse and repeat.
Now, wasn’t that simple?
You can also create FeedCount at this point, which tracks your circulation (according to FeedBurner.) Since I think Web Page Counters are so 1997, I’m not planning on adding this to my blog, however.
As you may know, I’m a fan of the visitor stats TypePad provides. I love seeing which search engine results link to my blog and how I rank for that search. I also enjoy seeing people find me through other blogs, discussion forums and Web sites.
I’m always psyched when I see a new "referrer"…a source that’s never brought me traffic before. The other day I found one that now escapes me. However, when I tracked it down, it was someone’s personal blog, and he was using it basically as a place to keep his bookmarks. (Although I don’t remember if it was a man, the humor was very…male.)
Yes, I know he could organize his bookmarks in a thousand different places…including the Bookmarks tab on his browser of choice. That’s not the point.
Or, maybe it is.
Maybe the point is that blogs serve many purposes, including the purpose of having a handy-dandy organizing file for items you don’t mind being public. Or for items that are better kept public.
Blogs As Sticky Notes
I often use our blog as a place to keep things for later retrieval. It’s like the "messy drawer" in my kitchen, except that with Google and other search engines, I can’t lose anything.
For example, I’m working from home today, preparing for an upcoming seminar on business blogs. I’ve got all these ideas in my head, but no organization yet. I’ve got to talk about the benefits of blogs, how to set one up, how to write a blog post, how to promote a blog, and so on.
Right now, as I do my research, every time I finish something I blog about it. I know I’ll be able to retrieve it later through my category navigation, or through Google. Plus, now it’s immediately available for other people to benefit from it.
Also, when we discover something new at flyte that we’ll need again, I blog about it. We ran into a problem recently where a client’s proposed shipping rates didn’t match up with what PayPal allowed. Rather than run into the problem again, I blogged about how PayPal’s shipping works in a post entitled PayPal Shipping Options Explained.
Just now, since I didn’t have the link handy, I just Googled "flyte blog paypal shipping." It takes less time than finding a document on my hard drive. Plus, other people can benefit from it.
And they do, judging by my visitor stats.
Blogs as F.A.Q.’s
I also find that I am often asked the same questions by many different clients. Questions on:
With my blog, I can often direct them to the exact post to give them detailed instructions on what they’re looking for.
Blogs as Bookmarks
Obviously, creating a series of links in your blog is one of the original reasons for having them. Although I could keep my bookmarks in my Firefox bookmarks menu, (and I do,) I find certain URL’s are worth sharing and keeping handy…even when I’m not on my computer.
Especially links that include our affiliate information, like for PayPal or Constant Contact. (Go ahead, click on them. It will do your heart good.)
First they tell us that we need to promote our business with a Web site.
Then they tell us we need to promote our Web site with Web marketing.
Then they tell us we need to support our Web site and our Web marketing with a business blog.
Now they tell us we need to promote our blog as well!
Stop the insanity!
OK, maybe I’m overreacting. There are a lot of tools available for promoting your blog. In the past, I’ve blogged about Bloglet (which allows visitors to subscribe to email alerts when you update your blog) and Ping-o-Matic (which sends feeds to a number of services and blog aggregators.)
While I’ve always offered an RSS feed of my blog, a friend recently told me that he’s used to seeing nice, clickable icons rather than a text link. (He’s very visual.)
To that end, I’ve added a few today. I started with NewsGator.
NewsGator serves many purposes: as a blog reader you can have blog feeds sent to your news reader, email program, or Web browser.
As a blogger, you can add a newsgator button to your blog, making it easier for people to read your blog.
Generating a button is easy. There’s a button link on the home page that takes you to a page that has the proper HTML for TypePad, BlogSpot, and "other."
In each case, you’ll need to change the code that says "RSS_URL_HERE" to your own RSS URL. You’ll need to know what your own RSS URL is, but if you’re on TypePad, right click on the "Syndicate this site (XML)" link and you’ll be able to copy and paste it in.
Once that’s done, it’s just a matter of adding the updated HTML to your blog. If you want to add it to the sidebar in TypePad you’ll need to have an Advanced or Pro level account.
Once that’s done…voila!
I’m working from home today, developing a seminar on Business Blogs that I’ll be performing at the Resource Hub here in Portland, Maine, on May 18th at noon. That means I’ll probably be posting every few hours or so as a new idea hits me.
Spelling is not my forté, so I always use the TypePad spell check before I publish.
Then I basically ignore it. I’m amazed by the words that it considers misspellings. For example:
There are also a bunch of other ones that escape me right now. But "blogger"?? That just seems odd.
My wish: an "add to dictionary" function so I could actually catch the words that are wrong.
The other day I discovered a great copywriting blog by David Garfinkle called World Copywriting Blog.
It’s got sound advice for anyone interested in creating more powerful, effective copy, online or off. I do wish there was more on Web copy specifically, although I did find some information–a link, actually–on email copywriting.
There might be some Web copy advice past page one, but unfortunately, there’s no categories listed, so I couldn’t drill down the way I normally would.
Regardless, it’s great reading and you should check it out. If you find some Web-specific stuff, send me the permalink.
Rich Brooks
A Picture Isn’t Worth A Thousand Words to a Search Engine
There’s no hiding from it now: blogs are here and they’re going to change your business. (So says BusinessWeek.)
BusinessWeek has a huge cover story on blogs this week, and though some of it is old news–the Google blogger who got canned, Stonyfield’s blogs as an example of how to do corporate blogs right–it’s a great primer for business owners everywhere.
The issue is still on newsstands, and you’ll probably be able to read a lot of it online.
Grace A. Stoeckle wrote a good primer on the importance of quality content on a Web site called: Limited Web Site Budget? Focus on Content.
Ms. Stoeckle recommends hiring a professional copywriter for your site (hear, hear!) However, she also realizes that this won’t be within everyone’s budget. She gives some good, quick tips on how to improve the quality of the content you write.
What I like about the article is the importance it places on copywriting. She understands that if you’re working on a tight budget, copy isn’t where you cut corners.
If you are planning on writing your own content this article is a good starting point.
When you’re ready to delve more deeply, I recommend you read Nick Usborne’s Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy and Persuasive Online Copywriting: How to Take Your Words to the Bank, by Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg and Lisa T. Davis.
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