Join us as we look at seven ways you can harness the power of online marketing for maximum results.

7 Tactics For Maximizing Your Online Marketing Results

Online marketing comes in a lot of forms. Some of it focuses on PPC campaigns, others leverage SEO techniques to create great content and generate leads. Still others focus on social media marketing, or email primarily.

The best online marketing strategies are the ones that mix in a little bit of everything, but more than anything else, they tailor it to their audience. Here are 7 ways you can get more out of your marketing efforts:

1. Check Out The Competition

Your competition is always going to be there, and while you’re certainly competing with them to win customers, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from their success and their mistakes. Start with surface levels looks at their social media profiles and their websites.

Take note of what’s working for them, what posts are getting more engagement than others, and then turn to your tools of choice. Look for options like Majestic or Ahrefs, anything that will allow you to put in your competitor’s URLs and peek behind the scenes.

Depending on your findings, you’ll have a baseline for what could potentially work better in your marketing and things to avoid.

2. Launch a Blog

Every business needs a blog. This will be the beating heart of your marketing. When marketing your website with On Blast Blog, the focus will be on pointing leads and customers to your content. Your content sells your brand, and it lends authority to your marketing.

Starting a blog in today’s world is incredibly easy, and connecting it to your website gives you a place to pull content from when you’re trying to generate leads or convince people to check out your company. It will also connect customers to your landing pages.

It’s the key ingredient to any successful marketing campaign. Without a blog, your brand has no voice, no identity, and no way of winning people over.

3. Get Comfortable With Top Management Tools

Managing your marketing is nigh impossible without the help of proper tools. If you try to keep everything organized on your own, you’ll drown in all of the moving pieces. Instead, consider using one of today’s top tools.

Consider these options:

• Buffer – A powerful social media management tool that allows you to schedule, track, and post on your profiles. With add-ons like Pablo, it can also help you create compelling visuals to spice up your marketing.
• Hootsuite – A similar scheduling tool for social media, but this one allows you to see other feeds and monitor conversations in a way its competition does not.
• SproutSocial – Sproutsocial is a management and engagement platform for businesses. It has a single stream inbox that ensures you’ll never miss a message. It also offers analytics and scheduling tools.

These are just a few examples. There are tons of management tools out there for every type of marketing. Seek them out for your unique marketing situation and you’ll  find they help you quite literally manage things easier.

4. Balance Content Creation and Curation

When it comes to your content, too much self-promotion can turn people away from your brand. It’s important that you remember that your customers should be the focus, not the brand itself. They trust and appreciate the brand because the brand focuses on them. It’s for this reason that marketers will usually recommend and 80/20 split between valuable informational content, and content designed to sell.

Among this balance, it’s important to look for a ratio between the content you create and the content you curate. Content creation should be set to a fixed schedule, and curation should happen between naturally as you find and feature content.

This is why it’s important to check out influencers and competitors in your niche. If you like what they’re publishing, use a tool like Pocket to save that post so you can retweet, share, or link to it later.

5. Automate Where You Can

Automation in your marketing can save valuable time and ensure that the customer experience is where it needs to be. There are a few different options for automating your marketing efforts:

• Lead tracking and nurturing – This can be done with CRM software and contact forms.
• Social media – there are chat bots that can reply to common questions, and tools for automatically featuring content or responding to mentions
• Email marketing – there are a variety of tools that can be used to automatically send out messages when customers make a purchase or leave a review for example.

6. Do Your Research

The best marketing is done with data to back it up. Researching keywords, topics, and interest are all crucial when you’re planning a marketing campaign online. This is why tools like Buzzsumo are so popular and integral to your strategy.

In the case of Buzzsumo, you’ll be able to research competitors or topics and see what kind of engagement and shares they are getting. Furthermore, tools like Google Analytics can show you how pages are performing and give you further insight into how your marketing is progressing.

Everything you do, back it up with data so you know you’re making an informed decision.

7. Diversify Your Marketing Types

Our final point, is diversification in your marketing. You can’t simply focus on one type. You need to work with all different types of marketing to truly succeed. Email, social media, PPC campaigns, landing pages, all of it needs to fit together into the grand puzzle of your marketing.

Now, that being said, you should focus on the types of marketing that resonate best with your customers. If you tend to get very little engagement on social media, but your email list is growing by the day, then you know to shift priorities.

The biggest takeaway here, is that marketing is not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. Different types of marketing work for different businesses. Don’t try everything, but definitely try more than one type for the best success.

Final Thoughts

Online marketing requires a unique approach for every business. In today’s world, it’s important that you harness all of the tools and strategies available to you. How do you maximize your marketing efforts? Let us know in the comments!

From Kelly Paxon who is an expert marketer and has spent the last decade perfecting her marketing prowess. She helps other businesses maximize their marketing efforts online.

Image Courtesy of Photoshop

To clear up any confusion that exists between what are antispam and  antivirus software programs, you firstly need to know the difference between spam and a virus. Not too much to worry about there as it is relatively easy to explain.

What is Spam first

Spam consists mainly of email delivered to you at your email address that was neither requested or solicited and is often and mostly on topics you have absolutely no interest in. It is a cold calling marketing technique for the Internet and many unscrupulous businesses will scour the Internet looking for email addresses wherever they can find them, firing out an automatic email which can end up in your inbox in the vain hope that they will gain your interest.

Another form of spam is the chain mail emails you get that encourage you to send out multiple emails to your friends on the basis you might get bad luck if you don’t forward then, receive some sort of reward or when you have been duped into thinking you are doing your friends a favor.

The worst kind of spam in my opinion is the malicious kind where people are actually trying to defraud you in some way, Nigeria is famous for being a source of the too good to be true financial offer which is typical of this type of email scam and often comes with the name Mr David as the source. Although most people are well aware of this particular scam now.

Another form of email spam is known as ‘Phishing’ and phishing emails are basically trying to deceive you or trick you into providing personal details about yourself or perhaps trying to access financial information. This is so that the perpetrators can use any information they gain to defraud you. In these cases they are normally pretending to be a bank or financial institution and they use a scare tactic to try and get you to enter your sign in details via a link they provide you with. An easy way to avoid being caught by many of these attempts to defraud is to simply not use the links provided. Or if you prefer you can use a program like Rapport, trusted by banks and designed to prevent phishing attacks.

There are other forms of spam but these are the main core of what most people consider to be spam. So now consider whether the spammers of the world are winning the battle, when you find that statistically more than 50% of email traffic fits into the spam category and is forecast to take an even bigger percentage then you could not be blamed for believing that they are.

This leads me to believe that both as organisations and individuals we need to take steps to protect ourselves from the unsolicited garbage that arrives in our in boxes, exactly how we can do that I will be discussing after an explanation of what viruses are.

What are Viruses

So what is a computer virus exactly, the items that come under the general heading of a virus fall into 3 main categories:

•  An actual virus
• A Trojan
• Computer Worms

Viruses are software programs that are sent to your PC with the sole intention of damaging either your PC or the network you are operating on. They are purely malicious and often it is difficult to fathom what inspires the people who put out such programs or to understand their motivation, from what I can see of things they really do not benefit by their actions in any way, they are just out to destroy and disrupt the activities of other users of the Internet.

A computer ‘trojan’ on the other hand is one form of program that may benefit them when they manage to install it on your PC. On the face of it a Trojan provides what seems to be a beneficial service to you but behind the scenes it is accessing unauthorised parts of your system and recording information that could be used by a hacker to gain access to personal information such as bank account details and passwords as examples.

Computer worms are another form of malicious software and what a worm does is quite simply to reproduce itself by sending copies of itself to other computers on the same network. They effectively clog up the system you are using by consuming large quantities of bandwidth that should be available for genuine communication.

Whichever form of virus you encounter, you can be sure that they are undesirable and unwanted on your PC or network, they are in one way or another going to cause you problems.

Something else worth noting is that often banks will not guarantee your account if you are accessing their system with a PC that is not properly protected with one of the recognized antivirus software programs i.e. if someone accesses your account or worse manages to take money from your account and you do not have suitable protective software in place the bank will deem you liable for your own loss. Something you should check in your terms and conditions, especially if you are involved in on line banking.

What Can You Do to Protect Yourself?

So having now found out about the horror of malicious software I am sure that you would like to know how you can avoid falling foul of the people that perpetuate these programs and are intent on causing your PC or network harm by installing one of the suitable antivirus software programs for your security .

There is free anti-virus software available if you want it and some of it is reported to be very good and very reliable. Personally I have never tried any of the free versions other than when I was given it as part of my university studies which was a little while ago now so I don’t think it would be fair to include it an anti virus software review.

What I am going to do however is discuss the anti-virus software programs I have used recently:

• McAfee Anti-Virus
• Norton Anti-Virus

McAfee Anti-Virus – has been my preferred anti-virus software choice and it came as standard with:

• Anti-virus
• Anti-spyware
• Firewall protection
• Web Safety Ratings

My perspective of this software is that it is relatively unobtrusive, all software programs that protect your computer as a matter of course have to download new versions on a regular basis and this as you will find if you have never used one is pretty much a daily basis. This normally happens as soon as you switch your PC on in the morning. I found with McAfee that until it had finished downloading and updating that my PC would run very slowly and I was almost better finding something else to do until it was done. This also applied to a lesser extent with respect to the weekly scan that I carried out that checked out the whole installed system.

There are scheduling options for the weekly scan to a time when you are not using your PC, e.g. at night, and you can switch off automatic updates for your daily updates, but that I feel would be unwise.

That aside I found the software to be really effective and whether I have been lucky or simply unaware, I have never had any malicious software make it past McAfee over the quite considerable time I have used it. I also really like the site checker option that you could use to look at a site for potential threats to your PC safety which gave you a report on whether a site had been involved in any malpractices.

So why did I change, well when it came to renewal I asked them what discounts were available as I had been able to get the software for 1/2 the price the previous year compared to the renewal cost, at that point they offered me an additional 10% discount which was no where close to the previous year.

Consequently I started looking for alternatives, ironically when my renewal was actually due within a day or two the offer was suddenly improved to 1/2 price again much the same as the previous year, unfortunately they were too late.

So would I buy McAfee again, answer yes at the right price and if they were competitive, had they made me their final offer sooner I would have probably still been with them.

Norton Anti-Virus – this is the software I currently operate with on my PC and it comes with:

• Antivirus
• Antispyware
• Advanced Protection

This is effectively the equivalent product to the McAfee Viruscan Plus, providing the same level of protection. In contrast to McAfee I hardly notice that it is running, even when it is downloading there is no significant difference in the performance of my PC and it uses smart software to register periods of inactivity and carries out scans which it evokes automatically when my PC is on but does not appear to be being used, that’s a nice feature.

What will an Anti-Virus Software Do For You

• Something like Norton Anti-Virus software will ensure you don’t get ripped off on the Internet, you can share, shop, surf the net, manage your finances, and socialize on-line without the risk of downloading threats or having your identity and passwords stolen.
• It can automatically performs a backup up your files discreetly, which means you don’t have to remember to do it and the process doesn’t get in your way.It also ensures your PC continues to run quickly and problem free using the tuning and clean up facility.
• It runs in the background without affecting what you are doing by getting in your way.
• Norton also gives you the ability to manage the program through the cloud putting you in full control, consequently simplifying how you protect your various devices.

I have been running Norton Antivirus for few years now and as with McAfee I have not had any malicious software get past the defenses, although I have had reports of attempts.

Norton also now offer a site checker functionality and with respect to obtrusiveness I would put Norton easily ahead of McAfee. With respect to price and in order to get a similar deal to my previous one with McAfee I had to commit to 2 years, but I did get a PC health check thrown in and to date I do not regret my decision to change.

On balance for the way I use my PC, Norton takes top place but McAfee is a very close 2nd and for people who use their PC’s differently to me i.e. who are not on it all the time McAfee is going to be just as good. So in the end I guess it now comes down to price. Either program does a great job of what it was designed to do, preventing malicious software gaining access to your PC and network.

Another alternative is the Kaspersky Anti-Virus program.

Kaspersky offers many of the same features as Norton 360 but is often considerably cheaper. So I guess you can pay your money and make your choice. The main difference looks like the absence of a file back-up function. But Kaspersky does mention a malware roll-back facility which might just be worth it’s weight in gold.

Best Anti-Spam Software

To be honest I have never been able to put up with the anti-spam software I have used previously and have either disabled it and more recently not bothered to buy it in the first place. Both McAfee and Norton offer anti-spam products and based on their anti-virus software I am sure they would be reliable products.

However I find that most of the email servers provide a level of anti-spam protection which for me is adequate to meet my needs. I follow basic rules of not opening email from an unknown source or that have executable files attached unless I was expecting them or really trust the source and the email does in fact look genuine .

Also spam gets filtered out and put into a folder that you have to check to see if it is really spam or not, so you end up looking at those emails anyway. There is also a function in Outlook which I use that allows me in the junk email function to block messages from a given source. So all in all I felt I had enough options to deal with spam beyond a specialised package, so would not invest in anti-spam software personally.

The choice is of course up to the individual and the level of risk you are prepared to take or administration you are prepared to put up with.

So I am afraid the best anti-spam software for me is no anti-spam software or free anti-spam software.

That said I have recently started to use Spam Fighter and have found it to be very unobtrusive and easy to use, it works within Outlook as opposed to an external program.

The premise on which it works is that it registers all the blocked spam that its users have physically tagged as spam and removes it from your inbox to a separate folder. You can of course unblock anything anyone else has called spam if you don’t consider it spam and, visa-versa, you can block emails that you think are spam that haven’t already been picked up. It is just a marked step up from using your junk email option in Outlook in that it pulls a lot of spam for you that has been labelled by other subscribers and then you don’t have to do it manually. Other than a cursory look to check auntie Gladys hasn’t inadvertently been labelled a spammer.

Since I have been using it the emails marked as spam and separated out have been pretty accurate, the ones I have unblocked from their master listing have been few and far between and they are always of a public nature and have never been personal email from friends or associates. So all in all a pretty good free package, which you can upgrade to a paid version if you really want to.

In Conclusion

Of the available antivirus software programs, my personal preference and recommendation is the Norton Antivirus package.

With respect to spam I really have come to like having Spam Fighter loaded on my PC, but then I do run Outlook and Spam Fighter becomes an integral part of that program, when loaded, and the basic program is free. Other than that, the antivirus software programs described do provide a level of spam protection as well, which the vast majority of people will find perfectly adequate.

Google continues to move steadily toward providing organic, content-driven search results, while at the same time, frustrating the SEO efforts that try to fool Google.  Since the implementation of the latest Penguin and Panda algorithm updates, old SEO tactics are no longer effective. Unless you change your game, your efforts to fool Google are likely to fall flat.

Tactics Once Used for Fooling Google That No Longer Work

1. Keyword stuffing actually hurts your site’s rankings – At a certain point in the evolution of Google’s algorithms, the frequent use of keywords ceased to be a positive force for driving a site to a higher place in the rankings. Some even called Google’s revised handling of keywords vindictive, because sites that were more focused upon keywords than content found themselves going through the floor in the rankings.
2. Scraping – Copying text verbatim from other sites is aggressively targeted by Google’s Panda update.  The practice will not only drop your site’s ratings, but egregious examples may eliminate a site from the search database altogether.
3. Paid ads are becoming obvious – Ironically, even those ads which Google places via its AdSense option are often misguided. Imagine that an ad for your site’s “miracle” weight-loss product appears on a website that is devoted to debunking weight-loss scams. The ad would hardly be considered productive, for either your product or the debunking website.
4. Google is coming down hard on cloaking – If you have more than one page promoting your site, product, or service, Google may drop all those pages’ rankings – making them harder to find. If you try to get around their one-page-per-flavor rule by using graphics to promote your product alongside invisible text to attract search engine favor (called cloaking), Google will find it. The result for most is lowered rankings or elimination from the database.
5. Google’s Panda update recognizes when you link to other sites whose content isn’t relevant to yours. It used to be that other sites linking to yours was a plus where your site’s credibility was concerned. Not so much anymore. Google looks at the links on other websites, and even in the comments on other blogs, and does a pretty good job of determining whether the other site or blog is relevant to the linked site. If it isn’t, your site will have the honor of making it to Google’s list of Spam sites.

What you need to keep in mind as you attempt to improve your search rankings is that Google has made it their mission, day-in and day-out, to make certain that their search results are organic, rather than manipulated or gamed. If you or your favorite SEO guru think that you’re clever enough to outsmart and defeat the army of Google engineers, tasked with delivering the objective, you might well be in for a very unpleasant surprise. As Google continues its efforts to make its search results more useful to users, SEO experts who continue to follow the old rules are increasingly likely to be marginalized by the search engine.

Author Bio:

This is a guest post by Sarah Brooks from Freepeoplesearch.org. She is a Houston based freelance writer and blogger. Questions and comments can be sent to brooks.sarah23 @ gmail.com. Epecially if you want to know more about why fooling Google is a bad idea.

photo credit: manfrys via photopin cc

• Frequency of your blogging
• SEO or search engine optimization
• Attracting more traffic
• Social activity and signals
• Number of links to your site
• Domain authority

Blogging Frequency

The number and frequency of blog posts you publish will have a bearing on the level of traffic you can generate and the speed at which search engines will spider your site and include your posts in their index of URLs. For example a blogger that posts every day will enter the category of breaking news and as such is likely to be included in Google’s newsfeed.

Clearly not everyone can find the time to post every day, so if you can’t, the next target would be to try and manage every other day or perhaps around 3 times a week. Failing that it is then a question of trying to establish a pattern so that your human audience, at least, knows when to expect the next update or offering.

I have to admit I am guilty of not always following this rule myself, but I can say that when I did post more frequently then I got a lot more traffic and more followers subscribing to my RSS feed.

When you have published new content, one way of getting the search engines to spider your site is to tell them that you have released new information. This can be done using tools that PING your content out to various search engine sites. If you operate a WordPress blog you can use the ‘Update Services’ facility in ‘Settings’ under the ‘Writing’ function. You just add the URL’s of sites like googleping.com or pingoat.net to your list of sites to notify. Optimizing blog posts correctly will also ensure that the search engines can find and understand what you are blogging about when they arrive, but with a lower posting frequency you may have to wait a little longer for them to turn up without that little Ping.

Of course there is always another option and in this case it could be to build a list of subscribers so that you can email them when you make a new blog post letting them know new information is available. It takes a while to build a list and until you do then you have to rely on other methods plus you must never forget that what you post must be useful to your visitors. Neither regular posts or email notifications to inform of new posts is any good if the content you are posting has no value.

Optimizing Blog Posts for SEO or Search Engine Optimization

SEO doesn’t happen by accident, it is a manual process that you need to do each time you create a blog post. The first action you need to undertake is some Keyword research.

What you are looking for are search terms people are actually using in relation to the topic you are writing about.

There are a number of search tools available but probably one of the most popular is Google’s Adwords Planner which can be used to check the volume of people that use a particular keyword or search term each month. There is plenty of advice on this blog describing how to do keyword research so I won’t go into any more detail here, but if you don’t know how to then go check out this category on keywords.

Once you know what keyword you are going to target it is important that you use that keyword in your title and your post URL. For the URL it is better to keep it short and succinct, this can be done by taking out unnecessary words such as – a, the, for, in, but etc. You can do this easily in WordPress by first of all ensuring that in ‘Settings’, under ‘permalinks’ you have selected ‘Post Name’.

Then when editing your blog you will see a facility, just under the title, to edit the ULR, that’s where you change it to an abbreviated version of your chosen keyword.

After that it is just a question of writing your content around your selected keyword but being careful not to over optimize it’s use. You can use an exact match of the keyword perhaps one more time in the content and then use synonyms for headers, image alt tags and further reinforcement of the keyword in your general text.

If you want to be really professional, you can utilize a plugin such as ‘Platinum SEO Pack’ to provide the facility for writing SEO titles, descriptions and keywords (tags) for each of your posts. There is always more you can do of course, but if you do these basics then you will be well on the way to fulfilling your SEO requirements for both search engines and your human audience, who also like to work out quickly and easily what a post is actually about.

Attracting More Traffic

This is always a tough cookie to crack, but one way of ensuring that you gain more traffic is to spread your message far and wide across a range of different medias. Social media is probably the most popular and everybody on the planet has now heard of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. But there are others and they can specialize in different medias, Youtube for example where a very simple video can be used to attract visitors to your blog to find out more, Pinterest where a graphic or infographic can and often do go viral.

This site Social Media Examiner has some even more interesting ideas on new and modern ways to drive traffic. The bottom line is that you have to get the message out there in ways that catch the eye and get the clicks, just writing about it doesn’t hack it anymore. There is way too much competition from people getting innovative and funky about the ways they share their news, especially through mobile platforms.

Social Activity & Signals

Social signals are all about authority and credibility, every share, like, +1 and Stumble you get increases your social footprint and sends a signal to the search engines. These are signals the search engines can no longer ignore because they demonstrate the human perspective on your blog.

Social signals are created by real people who are indicating they like what you are saying or publishing. Clearly providing information in formats they like, text, video, audio etc. and making your posts easy to share will contribute to ensuring that visitors will share your information across their preferred social media sites. And the more they share the better it will be for your blog.

If you are not having the success you would like with your social media engagement it might be time to start looking at one or two advanced tools that might just help you make your site more appealing. Twitter Cards are a great way to present the media on your blog via Tweets for example.  If you are a developer, especially of mobile apps you might well need to consider using Facebook’s Open Graph Tool.

Links to Your Blog or Website

Believe it or not the social signals we have just been discussing are now one of the primary ways of getting links to a website and they are recognized by the search engines. It also goes without saying that, if you know anything about SEO, that links are still the main indicator to search engines about whether your site has any authority. In other words you need lots of people from different sites and domains linking to your site.

But beware the linking must appear natural and organic not contrived or indicating they are there purely to manipulate search results. If the linking looks unnatural and fabricated for the purpose of fooling search engines then you are likely to be penalized as a result. You may even get a message from Google telling you as much and if you do you will need to take action to rectify the situation.

So how do you know what is natural and organic? Well for a start links need to come from sources that would normally have an interest in your subject, they may possibly be using you as a source of additional information to expand on a subject they have been discussing or perhaps citing you as a good resource for supplying specific products or services their visitors may be interested in. The same rules apply if you are creating links for yourself e.g. if you are commenting on blogs and leaving a link to your blog (or post) make sure that the blog has a relevance to your own blog and that you engage in some real dialogue of value.

Needless to say there are any number of ways for building back-links legitimately, but whenever you undertake this process for yourself then just be sure the end result fits what would be considered a natural profile with quality engagement and added value.

 Domain Authority

Domain authority is effectively a measure of the level of trust your domain has gained in the ‘blogosphere’. A little authority comes with the age of your domain registration i.e. 4 years is better than 4 weeks, but there is a lot more to it than that. It will also depend on who is linking to you, who you are linking to, whether you have some sites registered to you that are perhaps a little (or a lot) ‘spammy’ in nature and finally whether your site looks like it has grown and developed, here we go again, naturally and organically.

What that means in practice is that you should only link to good quality sites, you should try and ensure that only high quality sites link to you and don’t believe big brother isn’t watching you when you register a few extra sites that you think you can possibly treat with a little less respect when it comes to publishing content on the Internet.

To explain the last point a little better…..if you register or create some sites that you think you can use in a ‘spammy’ way to promote your clean, high quality site or even sites pointing links at your high quality site, then think again. There is a good chance this will be spotted and even though you have a perfectly legitimate ‘A’ grade site, it may suffer as a result of your association with the ‘spammy’ sites. So in a word, whatever you publish on the Internet needs to bring quality and add value at all levels if you want to be sure you are not incurring any penalties from the search engines.

Some other important aspects of domain authority relate to the diversity of your incoming links, they shouldn’t all come from a single domain (that’s not natural), they shouldn’t all arrive at the same time (also not natural) and they shouldn’t all just link to a single page on your site. The latter effectively suggests no-one is interested in the majority of what you publish, they are only interested in one article or perhaps the home page…..that would not be good.

Of course all of this requires some effort to achieve and stay on top of, no doubt mistakes will be made and when they are it will be a good idea to correct them. Search engines have been learning their lessons for a long time now and the world of the Internet has changed quite significantly, especially over the last year or two. So if you want to get traffic to your blog, optimizing blog posts should be done in a way that doesn’t upset the organizations that can deliver that traffic!

Images courtesy of PhotoXpress

“We call them “m.dot” sites, as in “m.facebook.com.” You’ll see this when a company redirects you to a mobile version of its site, rather than spending the time and money to design and develop a responsive website experience.” from – Rameet Chawla, Fueled

I did take exception to this a little. First of all if you take a look at m.facebook.com you will see that it is actually a mobile version of Facebook. You will probably also notice that a lot of time and effort has been put into ensuring that the site works well for the smallest of mobile devices.

But before I go any further, I suppose I need to explain why I have a bit of a problem with this.

It is because I see mobile technology, especially the miniaturized smart-phone variety, as having a fundamental design flaw. It’s called the ‘general user interface’ or GUI. Basically when you are taught anything about design in terms of the GUI, one of the basic requirements from a practical perspective is that humans need to be able to use it. That includes those with bad eyesight, fat fingers and people who are generally a bit clumsy.

It is also apparent to me, that this simply isn’t the case, many people really do struggle to use their smart-phones. Sometime it is a problem with the program they are using or perhaps if they are on the Internet it could be the website they are visiting. Those big fat fingers or maybe the poor eyesight lead them to press the wrong menu item, open up a link they didn’t intend to or a page they have no interest in. Sometimes people even type the wrong letters when trying to put their name into a form or other complicated tasks like that.

The truth is, yes some websites aren’t mobile friendly, but the real problem is not the website but the fact mobile screens are just too small. Going on the Internet, for example, is normally a visual experience where you want to see some nice images, watch a video or read the information on a website and have it all wrapped up in a stimulating, interesting and aesthetically pleasing format that is easy to navigate.

All of which is very difficult to achieve on a screen the size of a postage stamp unless the site has been stripped out which we all know can make it very bland and uninteresting simply so that a mobile can handle it, responsive design or otherwise.

The theme I use on this blog for example is supposed to be a responsive design, but the fact is it doesn’t really work that well. For now I am biding my time to see if the theme designers improve it’s responsive performance. I really like this design on a normal PC and quite frankly I am loathe to change it. So that leaves me the option of creating a more responsive subset or changing the theme completely. I think if I do anything, assuming nothing more is done for this theme, it will be to change the theme for another one. This is WordPress after all, so that will be relatively easy to do, but all because Smartphone screens are too small.

Now before you try to shoot me down in flames and and tell me I have it all wrong, that smart-phones are the best thing since sliced bread and sell in the millions. Then I know all that and I realize the gimmicky appeal of smart-phones has over ruled common sense design practices. I also know they can be very handy at times, especially if you want to make a phone call! (sorry I know sarcasm is the lowest form of wit)

Although I can’t help but notice the ads for new mobiles that are saying things like 30% more screen size or use this handy plastic pen so you don’t have to get your big fat fingers in the way (they don’t actually say that, but they should). And when I do I feel like saying….. I rest my case!

But to say everyone should drop their PC based web designs for a fully responsive one that works on every size screen is a bit rich for me. Especially when some companies have gone to great length to ensure that they have provided a perfectly reasonable alternative to their main website that does cater for the mobile market. And yes, that will normally be with a responsive design approach that can cater for iPads and smart-phones down to the smallest size by the way.

By retaining a less constrained website design that has been designed for PC based viewing, surely those companies have catered for all preferences and have not diluted the full web experience for those people that still prefer to surf the Internet on a device that is actually large enough see the design elements and has useful interface tools like a mouse to help them navigate the site.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not totally against responsive designs for mobile devices and actually I think if you don’t at least try and cater for the mobile market place then you are being a little shortsighted.

I am just saying why have one size fits all in all cases if its not necessary, what is actually wrong with m.dot sites? It strikes me that there is nothing wrong with them and that they provide a good solution to the mobile problem that simply requires a very simple switch over from one web address to another. No big deal.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest!

So….what do you think?

photo credit: Ryan Tir via photopin cc

The truth is when I first started out I didn’t really know, I could have quoted the usual stuff, you know ‘it is an abbreviation of web-log’ or I could have been a little more clever and said it is a chronological list of posts published on the Internet that reflects the thoughts, ideas and philosophy of the author.

Some people might say it is a method of communication, a social engagement tool that allows you to reach other like minded people. Maybe it’s just a business aid to help promote a company or a charity. It could just be a way of selling stuff on the Internet or even giving it away.

Well actually blogging is probably all those things and quite a few other things as well; depending on who is responsible for it.

My first attempts at blogging were totally unfocused ramblings about lots of different activities that were occurring over time involving a variety of different subjects. A visitor to my first ever blog described the content as being a little random. I suspect he was being a little kind, the posts were actually completely random. If I had carried on in that way I have no doubt it would have drawn an audience of a sort but not an audience  who were interested in cohesive and focused content.

Of course that wasn’t my objective, the reason I was blogging at all was to get noticed on the Internet by potential customers for my businesses, just as many people do.

The randomness came about because of my complete lack of understanding of how blogging should be used. That was several years ago and I now understand, or at least I think I do, that to create quality content and to draw an audience, there does need to be some level of focus and planning.

The basic requirement of any blogger is that they chose a subject of interest, one that they are passionate about, and then go about creating quality content which is marked by their personality and individual style in a way that engages people at a social level.

So do that and you will likely be a very successful blogger, fail to do that and you probably won’t be successful at all.

Blogging, is not an exact science, there will be people that break the rules and still get a huge following, but they will be few and far between.

Nobody really knows why some people seem to have a bit of magic at their disposal and others don’t. It is a bit like trying to predict who will have the next GangNam Style hit. That said there are underlying rules that set standards. A blog needs to work technically for example, be easy to navigate and should not throw up flags to search engines that say ‘I am trying to fool you’.

There are also other methods and approaches to blogging that should ensure you at least get the basics right. And that is what this blog is all about, it provides the general guidelines that explain what a blog is, how to get it published and then market and promote it in a way that most individuals and small businesses can understand and implement.

Search engine optimization is one of the big subjects covered, along with how social signals now go hand in hand with SEO and generally which are the best tools for blogging and web marketing.

As for the magic ingredient, well that is up to you to provide

Know Yours Readers And Their Desires

Though this holds true for running any type of business on any site on the web, knowing your visitors’ likes and dislikes is absolutely vital for all blog owners. This knowledge will allow a blog owner to connect with their audience and set up solid networking contacts. Social networking, relevant pictures, managing flaming topics, answering posted questions and adding new desired topics are daily tasks. Many of these can be done by special guest posters the blog owner promotes to moderators.

Be sure to make your site as interactive as possible. Adding videos to your blog increases traffic tremendously.

Make sure that all your content is original and tasteful or you may be facing criminal charges. If you have gotten legal notification about some of your content you may be able to defend yourself. Attorneys, like Katz & Phillips, P.A Florida criminal defense group, are also able to help you in such cases.

Have Adequate Data Recovery Systems

It’s imperative that your blog is run like a business, having an adequate backup service and disaster recovery plan for all of your data. Too many small business owners have faced financial ruin due to losing all of their data and information after an unforeseen accident or natural disaster. The recent flooding in New Mexico taught many business owners that data recovery systems are vital for any business that wants to survive a disaster.

Use Local Web Hosting Service

Maybe one of the most vital things that a business owner can do is find a local web hosting service. All too often, business owners choose a web hosting service that’s in a different region or even different country. Depending on the price, this may seem as if it saves money in the long run, but it will actually end up costing a company valuable clientele.

Local web hosting companies make sure that your website doesn’t take a long time to load. A website hosted by a distant company will annoy customers as it loads slowly in a world where everything should be available in an instant. Local hosts can ensure that this isn’t an issue.

Be Prepared for Visitors

New blog owners  are often left baffled at the influx of traffic that can occur as soon as their blog goes live. Allowing “guest posts” makes your blog interactive and will make up the majority of the content on your site. The more guest posts, the more content, which makes for more site visitors. Some people may be in a business that isn’t affected at all by posts, but the majority of blogs on the web thrive on visitor traffic.

Protect Business Computer Network

Data loss or theft by malicious means is becoming a huge problem throughout the world. This makes it is vital to have up-to-date antivirus software on all company machines. Passwords should also be mandatory and changed at least once a month. Another huge issue that many blog owners don’t take into account is internal betrayal, so it’s important to only grant as much access to a moderator as they can be trusted with.

Getting a blog off the ground and making it successful is an arduous process in which only the most committed can succeed. This means that a small blog owner or site manager needs all of the advice that they can get when running their own webpage. Luckily, there are tried and true methods that have been used for years in achieving success on the internet, and as long as an individual knows them, including the aforementioned, they should do well overall.

Sara Crawford is an author and artist specializing in Graphic Design and presents this post for all fellow bloggers to be, who may have questions about the safety of their site. Katz & Phillips, P.A. provided helpful legal examples to examine while he prepared this article.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5192671218/

Image: courtesy of photoXpress.com

Make Sure Your Website Load Time is Decent

Having a really slow website can kill your PageRank because it always puts a damper on the overall user experience. You may need to change your web hosting plan and invest a little more money into your site every month to make sure that it runs faster.

Get Quality Backlinks

Links to your website on other sites are always a good thing. It basically tells Google that other people out there on the internet are appreciating your content and they want to share it with their followers. This will definitely be a good thing for your PageRank. Make sure any links to your website are natural, organic, and on high-quality websites.

Let Google Know What Your Website is About

You want to have clear title tags, URLs, meta descriptions, meta keywords, H1 and H2 text, etc. that lets Google know what kind of content is going to be on your website. This is great for the user as well as he or she will not have to sift through a lot of confusing information to get to the content they want to see on your website. Another great thing to do is to utilize a sitemap on your website. This is a great way to lay out the outline of your website for the search engines.

Create High Quality Content and a Great User Experience

This is the most important thing Google wants you to do by far. If you are creating great, unique, high quality content, people are naturally going to link to your website. If your website is very clearly structured and laid out well, users will have a much better experience. Google’s main goal is to provide internet users with the content they want to see. Instead of focusing a lot of time and resources on building backlinks, the best way to improve your PageRank or search engine listings is to simply devote the time to making your website the best it can possibly be.

Sara Crawford is a freelance writer and internet marketer from Atlanta, Georgia who often blogs for SolutionBuilt, an SEO and digital marketing company in Atlanta.

So to be sure you are getting the latest updates and can revisit the content of articles reflecting the very latest information being shared, you have a couple of immediate options:

• You can like the Facebook page using the Facebook button above to access the Facebook page or
• You can join me on the Scoopit SIte where I will be posting all updated content as I work through this exercise. ScoopIt automatically feeds these updates through to Facebook so if you are not a ScoopIt fan then all you need to do is check out the Facebook posts and include them in your news-feed so you don’t miss anything.

For my part I am actually enjoying working through the process of updating my content with all the latest available information. This is based on the research and learning experience that I have been going through since I started blogging over 4 years ago. I have to admit that when I first started blogging, I was a bit naive and it all seemed a bit daunting. But now there is no doubt that I have learned an awful lot and there is nothing I like better than sharing what I know with anyone looking for help and advice on blogging.

I think the information I am providing is good quality and highly useful for anyone that wants to blog or needs access to the latest thinking on how to blog for business. So all you need to do is look at what I have written to determine if you think the same. This is a free resource, there are no charges, but of course where I recommend products there is a good chance that I will receive a commission, not always, but for the sake of the exercise it will be best to assume I do and temper your response accordingly. Not that I am making bad recommendations purely for the sake of gaining commissions, quite the contrary. The emphasis is on pointing people in the right direction and if in doing so I can earn a little money then of course I am going to.

This is the latest updated post Web 2.0 Traffic Tactics, have a look and if you like what you see and would like to find out about future updates, then go and like the Facebook page or join me on ScoopIt

That way the information should stay fresh and useful to visitors.  I am not suggesting in that statement that blogging has had it’s day, far from it. I actually think that the modern day blog has so much more to offer than the origins from whence it came, but now the emphasis needs to move from frequency in a chronological arrangement to exceptional quality of content.

Technology has accelerated into a miniature world of smart phones, tablets and eReaders. This means that there are far more people accessing the Internet on a far more frequent basis and they are searching for all sorts of information on so many different topics. But the content they find needs to be very good quality, accurate and up to date, as well as being accessible from a range of different devices.

Blogging is still a great platform from which to provide great content and with programs like WordPress, the content can be presented in a format that is adaptable to the device it is being viewed upon.

So here is the plan, ‘A Good Time is Blog Time’ is going to be migrated to a responsive layout platform that adjusts for mobile devices as well as notebooks and PC’s. The content is going to be updated and brought right up to current thinking and where necessary there will be some casualties.

Posts that no longer have a place on the blog are going to be retired, those posts where things have changed so much that they are no longer relevant or useful. There will of course be some posts that stand the test of time and are still as relevant today as they were when they were written, plus of course there have been many posts that have already been re-visited and are already up to date. They were just done outside of this proposed systematic update that is going to follow the chronological update of each and every post in turn starting from day one and what was my first ‘Hello World’ offering.

The end result will be a resource that will help anyone looking for the latest information on how you can build or supplement a business using a blogging platform as an Internet tool that can be integrated with social media sites and build author authority that will compliment or equal page authority.

The first update in this process is in fact the very first post that this blog ever made which is as relevant now as when it was first written over 4 years ago http://blogaude.com/why-and-how-to-blog/. Go and have a look, especially if you don’t understand how blogging came about and how it has evolved into the product you see today.