Bretts Marketing Bytes

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Wordpress is a great blogging software, but one of the questions that always comes up in a lot  of my seminars is how to theme Wordpress.  My answer is usually, hire my company! ha ha.

However, there are a lot of do it your-selfer’s out there. For you guys there are ways of skinning a Wordpress blog that doesn’t require you to go into the code and spend all day making tweaks.  One of the best resources that I have found is Frugal Themes . I am a big fan of keeping the blog clean and there is no cleaner theme out there. Unfortunately this is a paid theme ($79.00), but it is well worth the money!

It provides complete customization of layout style, colors, logo, fonts and what ever else you can imagine without having to know any code.  I have to admit, even for a guy like me who doesn’t mind getting my hands dirty with code, I use this from time to time.

The other reason I thought this would be a good post is because a lot of people in my seminars are not tech savvy. Frugal Themes support and comprehensive directions are unmatched. I think most non savvy people would be able to figure this one out with a little help from the Frugal support forum.

This theme also lends itself nicely to most business people because it is very clean. If you are looking for a funky style theme, fugal themes is probably not for you.

If you do not want to pay for a theme, there are plenty of free ones available, but you will have to spend a lot of time tweaking code to get it to look like you want. I love when I find something that truly stands out from the rest and this is one of them.

Click here to check out the video on their home page to see how it works.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your theme.

XML  is the format that Google, Yahoo and Bing wants us to submit our Sitemaps  to them so they can crawl the deeper pages of our blog.

Sitemaps do not guarantee all links will be crawled, and being crawled does not guarantee indexing.  However, a Sitemap is still the best insurance for getting a search engine to learn about your entire blog or website.

This article is about generating an XML Sitemap for your Wordpress blog that auto generates every time you post a new article. This requires a little FTP knowledge and that is about  it.

• First of all you will need to download an XML Sitemap plugin.
• Follow the directions on how to install the plugin. Follow the configuration instructions and viola, you now have a dynamic XML  Sitemap for your Wordpress blog. Now what?
• Once you have the Sitemap ready to go, you should submit it to Google webmaster tools, Yahoo and Bing so that you can track results.

It’s really pretty easy. I absolutely love this plugin. XML Sitemaps are an absolute must for every Wordpress blogger.

Everyone is so hyped up about Facebook and Twitter for business. While these are great tools, they are often more effective when used in conjunction with a blog.

Facebook and Twitter are like a big cocktail party, while your blog is like your home. When you go to this cocktail party and meet someone, if you like them, you might invite them to your home to learn more about you. If they like you , they will hopefully do business with you, refer you to someone or subscribe to your blog.

Your blog is the place to bring people to learn more about you or your business practices.

What can a blog do that Facebook & Twitter Cannot

• Position you or your company as an expert
• Educate existing and potential customers
• Help with Search Engine Optimization
• Help your company to be more transparent
• Spread a message longer than 140 characters.
• Separate you or your company from the competition

Listen to Seth in the video above. Do it even if it is for yourself. Eventually people will start reading it.

So you want to create a blog but are not sure how to get started? Like any venture, blogging requires a plan to be successful. Below you will find 7 simple steps to starting a blog.

1. Decide what to blog about. This is a a difficult task for most people, but can be really easy if you can answer some basic questions.

a. What are you passionate about?

b. What could you talk about for hours?

c. What do you know about that others do not?

If you cannot answer any of these questions, then blogging may not be for you.

2. Narrow it down . OK,  So you have answered the questions above and you know what you want to blog about. But you are probably asking yourself, isn’t everyone already blogging about that already? Why would someone read my blog over everyone else’s? These are all valid questions and can be very discouraging to most, but to be successful at blogging you should narrow your topic down to a niche within a niche. For example; if you decided to blog about  Smartphone’s, narrow it down to the iPhone, even take it one step further to a specific software for the iPhone or a specific use for the iPhone like photography. The more niche your blog is, the easier it will be to get and maintain readers.

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Psycho Hockey Lady

Contrary to what most people new to blogging think, blogging is not just about online conversations. It’s about traditional communications as well.

We are humans and humans love to socialize, whether it is in person, online or over the telephone.  When creating a successful blog it is important to tap into all of these channels and network with other bloggers.

The more you network with other bloggers the more successful your blog will become.  Other bloggers can provide you links, trackbacks, references and possible exposure to more subscribers.

There are many ways of networking with other bloggers,  but the one that gets over looked the most is the face to face communication.

If you meet another blogger in person, ask them if you can get a picture taken with them and blog about the experience. This creates a good bond between you and the other blogger. It is also a great opportunity to share links and possibly get some exposure to each other’s readers. I have included an example below.

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