Is there still hope without a blog?

I would say ‘yes’. After all, a blog only works if you actually post to it and actively promote it. It’s no silver bullet and it does take time and commitment, and honestly, it’s not for everybody.

One of the main benefits to having a blog is that with well-written and targeted content it can attract search engine traffic quite easily. This is the main benefit you will miss out on by not having a typical, text-based blog. But search engines are not the only source of traffic. So while there are many benefits to having a blog, let’s consider some alternatives.

1) Re-think what a ‘blog’ means

The typical idea of a blog is a text-based site that you update at least once per week and ideally more frequently, with posts of several hundred words. But here are some variations on what a blog can be:

• Video Blogs – If writing is not your thing, perhaps you would be more comfortable on camera posting short clips on topics related to your business or art? iJustine is perhaps one of the better-known examples of popular video bloggers. Video is great for those with something to say, but who don’t enjoy writing.

• Podcasts- Not everyone likes to be in front of the camera, but an audio-only format can be more comfortable. Podcasts can be short or long-form, could feature only you, or discussions with a ‘guest’, and are very easy to produce with minimal equipment required.

• Photo Blogs – Or more generally, image-based blogs. Obviously this lends itself to those creative types who would rather let their work speak for them. A beautiful photo, illustration or design concept with a short comment could be a blog post. This is a great way to showcase your work, get feedback on developing concepts and maintain an easy-to-update web presence.

• Short-form blogs – A blog doesn’t have to be filled with lengthy articles to demonstrate your expertise and thought leadership -  that works very well for some people and industries, but not everyone. You could post brief thoughts, insights, and remarks on your passion or industry. Matt Mullenweg from WordPress regularly posts short quotes and thoughts on his blog

While these forms of blogging will not get you as much search engine traffic as a traditional blog, they are still a way for you to have a personal, regularly updated, low maintenance online presence, and a place where others can see what you are about and connect with you.

OK, so after considering these options, if you still don’t want to have any sort of blog, what are the other alternatives?

2) There are still other ways to drive traffic to your site

You will still need some kind of web presence – a website with clear information about your business/product/service and the ability to collect email addresses – at the minimum. But even without a blog attached to it you still can generate traffic and create interest in your business. Here’s just a few ways you can go about it:

• Social media – Twitter, Facebook and other niche social networks for your industry can give you a platform to connect with people by focusing on what you are passionate and knowledgeable about. Short, casual updates are the norm so it’s low maintenance. Your profile will contain information and a link to your website, so the more you get involved, the more people will see and click on your website link.

• PPC (Pay Per Click) – If you have a budget, even a small one, you can buy sponsored ads on search engine results pages to drive traffic to your site. A PPC campaign should not be entered into without a little research, otherwise you’ll waste your money, but it can be a cost-effective solution. You can set a daily spending limit to make the cost more manageable.

• Email marketing – It takes some work to develop an opt-in email list, but writing one piece of content per month may sound much more manageable than multiple blog posts per week. Email is a very effective way to promote yourself and connect with your audience. More direct sales pitches are also tolerated and expected more with email marketing than on social media, for example. By providing useful content and a well-crafted call-to-action, you can generate sales directly through email marketing.

• Blog commenting – Just because you don’t blog, doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from those who do. Leaving thoughtful, insightful and positive comments on blogs that are relevant to your audience is a great way to drive traffic to your site. Most blogs allow you to include your url, usually linked with your name, so that if you leave valuable comments, people will be encouraged to find out more about you and click on your link.

Blog or no blog, there is no answer to generating traffic that doesn’t involve some work – that’s the bottom line. Whichever method(s) you use, blogging included, there is no short cut to developing an interested audience. But the internet offers a plethora of ways to express yourself, so find the medium that suits you the best and start there. With consistent efforts you will see results.

*image header courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/busyprinting/4227080733/

What does bounce rate mean?
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page” – from Google’s Analytics help pages.

When does bounce rate matter?

- If you have a sales or conversion process which requires the user to follow through multiple pages on your site

- If exploration of your site is important to you

- If you are trying to turn new visitors into loyal readers or customers

- If yours is a retail site and want people to shop around and make purchases

- If your homepage is not inducing further clicks, particularly if it contains blog excerpts or other ‘teaser’ content

What a high bounce rate could mean:

- It could be an indication that your keywords are not aligned with your content (in cases where people are coming from search engines) or are misleading your visitor so that the page they land on does not meet their expectations

- Additional content is not easy to find, or the options are confusing or unclear

- Site navigation is not easy to use

- The next step is not made clear

- Your offer or product is not presented in a compelling or easy to understand way

- Your content is not compelling

- There could be a technical problem – broken images or links, or something on the page not loading up correctly.

When is a high bounce rate not necessarily a bad thing?

- If your blog homepage contains all your recent posts in their entirety – Blogger blogs are notorious for this. When all your posts are presented up front there would be little reason for someone to click to any other pages.

- It’s possible that if you have more returning visitors than new visitors to your blog, especially those that are subscribers, they may just want to read the newest thing you’ve posted and have no need to visit other pages.

- If you are promoting a landing page which contains the call to action within it, such as submitting an email address, that page can do its job effectively without require further clicks.

- If the call to action or conversion takes your visitor off-site – to an external shopping cart or email sign up for example – this would look like a bounce, but can still be a conversion.

- Blogs typically have higher bounce rates compared to other types of sites so the same benchmarks do not apply.

Bounce rate is not the only metric
Don’t look at bounce rate in isolation – look at the overall picture of your website and how it’s performing according to the metrics that matter to you. What DO you want your visitors to do at your site? Are you making it easy for them to do that, and are you measuring it?

Look for trends and other data that gives you a fuller picture of what the bounce rate really means:

- Is the bounce rate higher or lower for certain keywords?

- Does it vary according to how people found your site? Search engines vs. social media, for example.

- How does it vary with New vs. Returning visitors?

- Which particular pages or types of content on your site have higher or lower bounce rates?

- Look also at length of time the visitor spends on the page which could indicate whether or not they are reading what they find – this is very important for a blog.

What other factors can make bounce rate an issue, or non-issue? How much attention do you pay to your bounce rate?

Here’s a few of the questions/comments she had:

She tells me that she’s not sure what to blog about but that she picks up new followers whenever she blogs.

So first things first – that blog should really be on your own domain, e.g. classysassycouture.com/blog .  It hurts me a little inside when I see people linking out to their blogs. While a popular blog hosted elsewhere can still help develop your brand name, it doesn’t help your site’s search engine rankings very much and it’s not very seamless for the user. One of the benefits of having a blog is that it can attract targeted traffic, and can boost your search engine rankings. But if all that lovely traffic is not going to your own domain, you’re missing out. So I would recommend getting WordPress set up on your site and creating your blog on that. You can export your content from Typepad and import it into a WordPress installation.

But, what to blog about?
Becky said she was running out of ideas. Currently she seems to use the blog to mention new products, talk about her travels and other personal topics. I think she has a great personal and conversational tone to her blog but would like to see her get more in-depth on topics related to her niche.

There’s several ways to go about getting inspiration for blog posts
1) Who is your target audience and what subjects are they interested in? Blog about those topics if they line up with your own interests and inspire you.

2) What blogs do you follow and enjoy? Look at why you follow them, what you like about them and how you can take inspiration from that. Are there topics they post about that you enjoy? Perhaps you can even join the virtual conversation by referencing a particular post and blogging your own thoughts on it.

3) Are there any ongoing, or hot topics of conversation within your business niche? Write posts that address those issues.

4) What is the inspiration behind your products? Give your audience some insight into what makes you tick, or your creative process. Maybe document the making of one of your products from inspiration through to completion, and include some great photos that help tell the story. This will help your readers feel even more connected to you.

5) Share insight about the back story of your business – why you started it, what you get from running it etc

6) What are your most popular posts currently? Look at your Analytics to see what’s already popular, or what readers have responded to the most (with comments, emails for example) and write more on those topics.

7) Look at the keywords that are bringing traffic to your blog – sometimes you see some phrases in there that you didn’t expect but give you some ideas as to what people are searching for that you could write about.

8) Go to the Google keywords tool and type in some relevant phrases to your industry – they will give you a list of related phrases and searches which can provide inspiration.

Google Adwords

Becky says she has been running a Google Adwords campaign: “My campaign is going okay, not sure that it has increased my sales/hits.”
If you don’t know, then chances are you are wasting your money! You should know exactly how much you’ve been spending and what sales and traffic have been generated as a result.
1) You can link your Adwords campaign to your Google Analytics account so that you can track in Analytics the traffic that is being generated by your campaign and if it’s effective for you. More info on how to do that.

2) Test different headlines and ad copy to see what performs best. Look at how much traffic is generated and how much actually converts to a sale.

3) Is your ad copy compelling? Fine-tune and revise what you’ve been using.

4) Create different ad copy for each of your products – don’t use a one-size fits all approach.

5) Are you sending people to the best possible landing page for that ad? For example, if your ad is about Aprons, when they click through it should go to the most relevant page on your site – not just the homepage.

SEO & Keywords
Becky mentioned that she’s trying to refine and optimize her keywords. She says “I’ve done research on keywords. I’m currently trying to target “rhinestone t-shirts, flip flops, aprons. faux pearl necklaces”…my main products.”

One of the main problems that many business owners seem to have with marketing is that they write it off too soon, without giving it a proper chance to work. See my post Recharge & Refine Your Marketing Strategy.

I see this a little with Becky’s site. She gives specific keywords she is trying to rank for, but her site reflects a lack of focus for those keywords.

1)   Let’s use ‘rhinestone flip flops’ as an example. The product page for flip flops does have a title that includes ‘rhinestone beaded flip flops’ but that phrase is not repeated anywhere else in the actual page.

2)   The product pages urls are not SEO-friendly. Url re-writing to create urls with keywords in them (rather than id numbers) would be preferable. Since Becky is using a 3^rd party shopping cart provider, this may or may not be a feature they provide. Ask the shopping cart provider if that is a feature they have or can add.

3)   There is very little text on the product category pages – consider adding a paragraph of descriptive text incorporating your keywords.

4)   The individual product pages do fare a little better, but the optimization could be tightened up by targeting more specific keywords on each product page.  Each page should be focused toward a specific keyword or phrase. Those words should be used in the title, the product description, the alt text of the image and the name of the product.

5)   None of the flip flop products are actually named using the word ‘rhinestone’. So perhaps pick one or two products that make sense and add the word ‘rhinestone’ into the product title under the image (this will also include the word ‘rhinestone’ in the link anchor text, creating solid internal links). On the following product page, make sure ‘rhinestone flip flops’ is in the title AND in the description and alt text for the image. Repeat this process for each product and make sure the names and other elements are all focused on specific keywords.

Keyword research

1)   Do thorough research and come up with any variations on your keywords that you can incorporate and make sure each product page is optimized for specific phrases as above.

2)   Go for the low-hanging fruit. For example the phrase ‘western rhinestone flip flops’ gets a few hundred searches per month, but only has about 66 000 competing pages, compared with 225 000 pages for ‘rhinestone flip flops’ – the latter isn’t a huge amount of competition, but since you are having problems ranking for the more competitive phrase, start with the smaller fish. Repeat this process for your other phrases and products. Rank for the less competitive phrases first, then start to target the more difficult ones.

Are you building backlinks?

Links to your site from other relevant sites are an important part of SEO and marketing your site.

1)   Look for relevant websites in your niche that may be willing to link to you such as directory sites (manually compiled lists of websites organized by topic), other blogs etc.

2)   Build links to your specific product pages using your keywords in the anchor text. Eg. rather than generic text like  ‘click here’, a better link would be: ‘purchase rhinestone flip flops at classy sassy couture’ – linked to your rhinestone flip flops product page.

3)   Write posts on your blog about your specific products, making sure to include the relevant keywords in the title and body of the post, alt text of the image, and in the link you provide back to the product page.

4)   Do some competitive research to see how you can improve. Who are your competitors? Look at their sites and see what they are doing differently or better than you.

5)   Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and see where your competitors are getting backlinks from – perhaps there are some sites you can also target for backlinks?

These are just a few starting points for Becky to work on to improve the effectiveness of her web marketing, that you can adapt for your own site as well.
If you think your site or business could benefit from a customized online marketing strategy, drop me a line.

*header image courtesy: Kristian M

Any marketing strategy requires constant refinement to make sure it continues to serve your purpose. That also goes for the components of the strategy – making sure that your website, social media campaigns, ads, promotions etc are all optimized to serve your purpose is an ongoing consideration.

Here are some useful questions to apply to any marketing effort that can prod you into more effective action. If you feel that something isn’t working the way you had hoped, try going through these and seeing what you can do better. Make a conscious effort to step back and view your marketing from the objective eyes of an outsider – someone who knows little to nothing about your business.

• Who are you trying to target?
• Do not say “everyone”! Get specific.
• Is your marketing effort optimized to appeal to that target? For example, are you using the right language, content, tool?
• Is your message specific and clear?
• What are your audience’s interests and problems?
• Are you addressing these by providing relevant resources or solutions in your promotions and content?
• Are you executing and feeding the initiative by, for example, producing content and actively promoting it?
• Are you being passive or proactive? Do you expect your audience to come to you, or are you meeting them where they are? *Hint, you need to do the latter!
• Are you doing the work of marketing? Consistently?
• Really??
• If not, why not? Are there technical or mental barriers to moving forward?
• Are you tracking the results of your efforts?
• Do you know how to read and analyze the tracking data?
• Are you refining your efforts based on the results?
• Are you looking for new ways to appeal to your target?
• Are you consistently refining and tweaking your efforts?

Yes, it’s an ongoing process. If you’ve exhausted this list and are still frustrated you probably need to bring in some other brains. Brainstorm with friends, staff, co-workers or consultants to inject some fresh ideas into your efforts.

What other questions can you ask that can reveal areas of improvement in your marketing?

*Header image courtesy:http://www.flickr.com/photos/oberazzi/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

To make it easier to stay on top of this strategy I recommend you use an RSS reader to subscribe to the most relevant categories for you on your chosen sites and scan them every day or few days to see where you can jump in and contribute.

Here’s just a few of the available sites you can participate in.

Answers.Business.com – lots of good business-related subcategories here.  You can create a profile page with links and can include links as sources in your answers. Plus editor Erika is really good about tweeting out questions and good answers so you can gain additional exposure that way.

Yahoo Answers – a recent redesign has helped out this long-running q&a site. Because of the huge span of topics and large audience, there is a lot of junk to get through, but you can drill down to find the legitimate questions to answer in your field.

LinkedIn.com – Their Answers section is a great place to help out and develop your reputation. Since LinkedIn is an established and business-oriented social network, it’s a good opportunity to get your name in front of real people in your field and network with them easily.

Focus.com – Their Questions section is a good place to network with serious business owners and execs and there’s significantly less ‘noise’ than on sites like Yahoo Answers.

Biznik.com Forums - Biznik caters to entrepreneurs and small business owners. In addition to any advice you can contribute, you will likely learn something as well.

Answerbag.com – similar to Yahoo in that it’s a very mainstream site, meaning you have to dig a little to get to the good stuff.  But the bonus here is that they provide ‘dofollow’ links which means it’s good for your SEO.

Here’s how:

1)  Click on Edit from the Profiles Overview screen in Analytics – the page you first see when you log in.

2) Then  click on Edit at the right of the  Main Website Profile Information box:

3)   Under site search check “Do Track Site Search”

4)   Enter the ‘Query Parameter’ which is generally ‘s’ for WordPress blogs (see above image)

5)   Check ‘No, do not strip query parameters…’ (see above image)

6)   Click ‘Save Changes’

7)   See the results in Google Analytics by clicking on Content in the left menu, then click on Site Search

Flickr is not just a community of photos, it is a community where high quality photography is appreciated. Sure, people use Flickr to share their point and shoot photos with family, but the power users of Flickr and the communities that you would care about as a marketer are usually looking at very high quality images.

For this reason, Flickr is not a place for marketing spammers and has remained largely free from spam, unlike other social networks.

Obviously it lends itself to businesses with a strong visual component, but if you attend a lot of events and can provide high quality, well-annotated & described photos for public use (using the Creative Commons licenses), there’s an opportunity for bloggers and others to use them if they are writing about that event and need some visuals.

One thing the article doesn’t mention is that you can provide a description with each photo, which can include links, so it’s a good opportunity to provide useful info and drive a little traffic.

Read the full article here:
How to Promote Your Business on Flickr : Marketing :: American Express OPEN Forum.

Sadly I’m not particularly handy with a camera, but if I were, perhaps I would take interesting portraits of my clients and (with their permission of course) post them to Flickr – helping promote them and myself indirectly.

What other creative ways can you think of to utilize Flickr to market your business?

Sometimes people’s eyes just glaze over when I talk about online marketing strategy. Perhaps they’re thinking ‘I have a website and I’m on Twitter, what else is there?’ Or perhaps it’s just one of those big fuzzy terms about which people have a vague concept but no real clarity.

Well here’s what I’m talking about when I say ‘online marketing strategy’. It’s essentially a roadmap for how you market your business. It’s not just about being on Twitter or Facebook, those tools are just a couple possible pieces of the puzzle. Your strategy is a long-term plan for your online marketing that utilizes the relevant tools for your specific business and most importantly  – all the parts work together to achieve your business goals.

WHY you need an online marketing strategy:

1)   To help you identify where you should be spending your time and efforts
2)   To help you stay on track with your business development
3)   To establish benchmarks to measure your effectiveness
4)   A well laid out plan will keep you from feeling overwhelmed by the task of online marketing
5)   Likewise your plan can provide inspiration when you’re not sure what to do next.
6)   If you have a staff, everyone needs to be on the same page – laying out a clear strategy will help.
7)   Consistency in your efforts and messaging is key and having a roadmap will help you achieve this instead of blindly fumbling along.

What does an online marketing strategy include?
This is quite a vast topic, but here are some of the main components to consider. You should write down or document in whichever way makes sense to you, your ideas about the following in order to create your plan for reference.

GOALS
What do you want to achieve?

1) You may want to break this into short, mid and long- term goals.
2) These will vary according to your exact business but they could be based around increasing traffic, increasing sales, increasing email subscribers, developing a community, and increasing awareness of your brand etc.
3) Make sure your goals are specific, measurable, relevant and not completely outlandish.

TARGET AUDIENCE
Who are you trying to reach?

The internet can help you pinpoint your desired client/customer but you have to know where to look and who you’re looking for.
1) Who is your target audience? Be specific. “Everyone” is not a valid answer here!
2) Build a profile of your desired customer so that you can start to pin down how to target them.
3) Where can your target audience be found online? Identify the key communities where you believe your audience is hanging out online. What specific social networks do they use? What blogs do they read? Where do they shop? What are they searching for? Do you have clear competitors that are attracting your audience?
Make sure to keep a running list of all these communities on file for your reference.

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
How will you reach your target audience? Which online methods will you be using?

There’s a plethora of tools and techniques contained within the umbrella of online marketing, and I’ll try and compile a more complete list of those for a future post. Meanwhile here’s a few things to consider:

Do you have a content strategy?

1) What type of content will you produce to attract your audience? Is video going to be key? Will it be ‘how-to’ blog posts?  White papers relevant to your industry? What content will work for Facebook vs. for Twitter? Are you representing your company on social networks in a way that is consistent with your goals and brand?

2) What outlets will you use to distribute your content? Social networks? Article marketing? Your website? Will you have a blog?

Is your current website working as effectively as it should?

1) Are you attracting enough search engine traffic?
2) Are you collecting email addresses and communicating with subscribers?
3) Does your site effectively communicate what your business is about and have clear calls to action for site visitors?
4) Are you collecting and analyzing web site traffic data?

Do you have a monthly advertising budget and if so how will you spend it?  Banner ads? Pay-per-click ads?

Will you need to create time-sensitive promotions to be incorporated into your overall marketing? E.g. holiday promotions or other seasonal items. Take these into consideration when planning your strategy so you have plenty of set-up time. Will such promotions require a different strategy in themselves?

Are your offline efforts in coordination with your online efforts? Make sure they support each other.

TIME

1) How much time do you, or your team have available to allocate to online marketing? How will you be spending this time? The more specific you are with what tasks you set out to perform each day and how much time you want to spend, the more effective you will be. Also see my post on 9 Time Management Tips For Social Media.

2) Set realistic goals for the time you will spend doing marketing each day and stick to it. If you have limited time, be sure to focus on the tasks that you feel will have the most impact.

TRACKING

Based on the goals you have laid out, you should have an idea of what metrics you will be tracking in order to determine the success of your efforts in meeting those goals.

1) You will need to have a system and schedule in place for taking note of and reporting on those metrics.
2) Will you be looking at the figures monthly, weekly?
3) Do you have established benchmarks already, or will you need some time to establish those first?

TWEAKING

So your marketing plan is underway and you’re tracking all the numbers. You will also have to check in with your plan and your goals every so often and see if things are going as planned or if tweaks need to be made. Perhaps you need to re-allocate your time based on your findings, or throw out some tools and try new ones. Your strategy is not set in stone – it should be an organic, adaptable tool that responds to your business needs.

When first starting out with your strategy, you should give yourself probably 3 – 6 months before making judgments on progress made since it can take a little time to get things rolling. After that initial period you might want to check in with your strategy and goals every quarter, or whatever you feel is appropriate. Just don’t let it get stale. When taking stock of your strategy you may also want to consider whether you are making the most of your own, or your team members’ talents. Make sure the tasks people are responsible for are suited to their skill and interest set in order to get the best out of them.

I put this simple guide together to clarify some of the terms that I throw around on this blog. I’m finding that many people have heard these terms, but aren’t necessarily 100% sure what they mean or why they should care. If there is a term you have heard that is not included here, drop me a line [lucy AT webtraingwheels.com] and I’ll consider including in a future installment of the guide.

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 describes the evolution of the internet from its early days of static web pages that waited to be discovered by web surfers (web 1.0), to dynamic, portable, social web content that lives in multiple places and can be easily shared and consumed in multiple ways.  You can copy and paste simple code to place a video on your website, you can subscribe to a website via email or RSS, you can vote for content you like on sites like Digg, or you can bookmark it and share it on sites like StumbleUpon and Delicious. All these things are part of web 2.0

Why you should care:

The way content is created is different now. You can work with video and images as well as text. Your content has the possibility of ‘going viral’ by being shared, re-posted and reaching a wider audience than you can reach just from your own website. By choosing what sites to subscribe to, users filter and customize their content to suit their own tastes so there are plenty of niche markets and communities you can discover, be part of and cater to.

What is Social media?

Social media is a huge part of web 2.0. It began to be buzzed-about with social networking sites like Friendster (remember them?) and MySpace. You could create a profile and start making ‘friends’ with other people on the same website. From there it developed into sharing content and voting and now many websites offer the ability to create a profile or interact directly with other users, and the content, in some way. Social media also relates to the phenomenon of user-generated content. So instead of news, entertainment, or any other kind of content only being generated by specific media companies, now anyone can create and publish content, whether it’s a blog post, a video, photographs etc.

Why you should care:
A lot of businesses are still trying to figure out exactly what to do with, and about, social media. They know they should be involved but are not sure how. There are several key reasons to participate in social media.

a)    You now have direct access to the audience for your product/service and if you can figure out how to connect with the right people, you can build your business for a lot less money than utilizing traditional media – buying ads, pr campaigns etc.

b)   For better or worse, credibility in any given niche is much easier to come by. No need to be written up by mainstream media, or write books etc. You can build a high profile reputation in your niche and be thought of as authority by publishing a highly traffic-ed blog and being active in social media.

c)    Users are also more active in expressing what content they do and don’t like by voting, sharing and commenting so you can get almost immediate feedback on what you’re doing.

d)   You can create your own content and then distribute it directly to your audience via your various social networks.

e)    You can find out what other people are saying about your company/brand/service and have the opportunity to directly respond.

What is Wordpress?

Wordpress is a free, open source blog publishing system.

Why you should care:

Because it’s brilliant! Wordpress allows non-programmers to get a blog or website up and running with minimal effort. Free templated designs, called ‘themes’ mean your blog will look pretty and professional even if you are not a designer. Widgets and plugins allow you to easily add functions to your site and change the way it looks.  Most webhosts provide an option for free installation of Wordpress and once installed, you can get blogging right away! Although there are several other blogging platforms available such as Blogger, Typepad and more, Wordpress is definitely my favorite. The beauty of WP is that it can be used to power much more complex websites than just blogs and there are a wealth of tools (many of them free) that have been built around it. Since Wordpress is so widespread there is a lot of free support available online and using WP you can make your site as simple or complex as you wish.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. An RSS feed contains the output of a blog or other stream of content in way that other services can utilize, therefore ‘syndicating’ your content to a variety of other outlets. Look for the little orange icon to indicate an RSS feed-
All blogs come with an RSS feed.

Why you should care:

RSS makes it easy for you to keep up with the latest updates from sites you enjoy reading. And you want your readers to subscribe to your feed for the same reason – it keeps you at the forefront of their mind by frequently popping up in their feed reader or inbox. Users can choose exactly what web content they want by subscribing to a blog’s feed, either via email (they get the latest posts sent to their inbox in an email) or by using a ‘feed reader.’ I use Google Reader and subscribe to many blogs. So if I want information about music, I don’t have to go and visit a lot of different websites, I just open my Google Reader and see all the latest posts, in one place, from all the blogs I have subscribed to. Much easier! In the same way RSS allows you to make it convenient for your audience to keep up to date on your new content. Using RSS, as long as they have subscribed, you can push content directly to them.

RSS can also be used to automate tasks. For example I give Hootsuite my RSS feed to update my Twitter profile and my blog posts are pulled into Notes on my Facebook page from my RSS feed.

What Is Micro-blogging?
Micro-blogging is a sub-division of blogging but as the name suggests, it’s based around very brief updates, which could be text, audio or video. So instead of writing a lengthy blog post, a Twitter update of 140 characters, or a photo, could be a micro-blog post. Micro-blogging is typically also accessible from other devices such as your mobile phone, allowing you, for example, to take a picture with your cellphone and post it to the web and your audience instantly, giving micro-blogging a faster pace and even greater sense of immediacy.

Why You Should Care:

Twitter might just be the only form of micro-blogging you really need to care about. But it also depends on your personality, industry and goals. If you go to a lot of events, and want to be able to share those with your audience, micro-blogging could be key. You can take video or photo on your phone and publish it to the web immediately without touching your computer. If the thought of writing blog posts turns you off, micro-blogging is a low maintenance way to share your voice and establish a presence.

Now, about that T-word…..

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that limits you to 140 characters in answer to the question “what are you doing?”  You “follow” people to subscribe to their updates, should you find them interesting, and the holy grail for Twitter users is to amass hordes of “followers.” As with any social platform, I personally believe it’s about quality not quantity, and how well you engage with your network, but on Twitter you’ll see everything from people that only broadcast content and follow no-one, to those that follow everyone that follows them, and of course the celebrity-Twitter-ers like Ashton Kutcher, Ellen etc who have literally millions of followers.

Why you should care:
While it may seem narcissistic to literally answer the question ‘what are you doing’ all day long – and believe me, many peoples’ twitter streams are incredibly narcissistic and boring – there are ways in can be useful.
Twitter is another forum through which you can directly connect with people who could turn out to be clients, partners or allies. There are many bloggers and high profile figures on Twitter that are more easily accessible on Twitter than via email/phone etc. You also get to present your brand on Twitter by what you choose to share – interesting articles/blog posts, insightful observations or commentary etc. When used correctly, your Twitter page can be a key part of the brand you are carefully crafting.

**header image courtesy of http://www.tomostudio.org/

2)    This means that, sure your site might come up first in Google if someone types in your company name, but that means they are already looking for you and aware of you. What about all the potential visitors you miss out on because your site does NOT rank for a slew of other related keyphrases?

3)    With an HTML site you can optimize each page according to its content, for different phrases/words – this is the best way to do it. Flash does not allow you to do this – essentially your homepage will be indexed but not much else.

4)    When you are a new artist/business looking to raise awareness and expand your target audience, you need to make yourself as accessible as possible to targeted traffic, and that means SEO in addition to other promotional avenues. Don’t make an already uphill battle even harder by starting out with a Flash-site that immediately limits your audience.

5)    Because of all the above, your organic search traffic will be relatively low, at least to start out with, leaving you to rely on other methods to get traffic, such as your own promotional abilities to spread the word, slugging away on Facebook etc.

6)    Loading pages, especially when they take too long are an obstacle to people getting to the good stuff. You risk losing people before they even see your site, never to return. And if you do get repeat visitors, it’s a bit annoying to have to wait for the site to load every time.
My personal advice for using Flash is to limit it to adding cool, but functional design features or flourishes, but not to build an entire site only in Flash.

It’s easier for well-known brands to use Flash, or even sites that are very text-light, and still rank highly because they receive a lot of incoming links from many other sites which helps them compensate for the lack of text on their own site. Using an example I saw on an old post at SEOBook.com, we can see this demonstrated in a search for “coffee” or “chocolate”. At the time that post was written, Starbucks ranked #1 in a search for ‘coffee’ despite having very little text on their site, and Hershey’s and Godiva ranked top in the chocolate search. This was attributed to the amount of incoming links for these brands which proved them to be relevant. These brands still rank highly today, but in both cases the #1 spot is now taken by pages on the distinctly un-flashy Wikipedia.

If you have a Flash site already, there are numerous articles that get pretty technical about SEO for Flash and since Flash isn’t my area of expertise I’ll leave it to them to explain how you can make the most of what you’ve got:
How To SEO Flash
A Modern Approach To Flash SEO
SEO Friendly Flash
Does Flash SEO Still Suck?
Improved Flash Indexing