Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Photo by Laenulfean
About a week ago I read a ProBlogger post called, "Have Blogs Killed Conventional Websites?". It was a Guest Post by Suzanne Falter-Barns. In this post Suzanne compares conventional websites to blogs as she tries to determine whether conventional websites are a dying breed.
The post brought up a lot of recent anxiety for me. I remember battling with these same thoughts about 18 months ago when I started my first blog. Up until that point all I had were static websites. It didn’t take me long after I started to blog and add in other Social Media activities to realize that I had nothing to fear from Blogs.
My answer to Suzanne’s question about whether Blogs have killed the conventional website is an emphatic, "No." Rather, due to Social Media & blogging, the standard static websites are evolving…. not dying.
I don’t think that Social Media is killing the static Websites at all. In fact, Social Media is giving static Website’s new life.
6 Basic Social Media Activities that can Give a Static Website New Life
- Opens up the Lines of Communication between Customer/Clients & Website Owner. You can do this in many ways. Such as Forums or adding a Blog to your Static Website.
- Let your Customer/Clients know via a Blog about Sales, Promotions, New items, Recalls, etc. Adding a Blog with a RSS feed to your website is a great way to let your customers and readers know about important updates.
- Adding a Blog to your Website can add new content / web pages to your site. This causes more entrances to your Website for Serps and for Viewers.
- Add Social Bookmarking buttons to your static pages and let viewers bookmark them. This can add extra traffic to your website when their social bookmarks are shared with others.
- Using Social Media can let your website compete with other websites/blogs that have larger marketing bank accounts.
- Using Photo sharing for your Product Images can bring traffic in to your website.
The list can keep on going, but my point is still the same. The Static Website is not going anywhere, but the successful ones will add Social Media.
I designed my first static website in 2001 and many, many more followed. It was in 2006 that my anxiety began to get really intense about blogging and other social media. I love security and stability and whatever was happening to the Web at that moment was freaking me out. What is a Blog? What is Social Networking? Why must I change?! But, after that initial temper tantrum I became very determined to not let my Static Websites fall to the waste side. I started researching Blogging & Social Media to see what I could do to adapt my static websites to what the web world was becoming. I wanted to learn what made a blog special compared to a static website…. what made a blog different than what I had already. Why should I feel so threatened by "The Blog".
Through that research and the year or so that followed I realized that the Blog is NOT killing the Conventional Website!! In fact, I feel that
Social Media is causing websites to evolve into so much more. So much more is being offered to the small business website. Blogging keeps the communication open with your customers and potential customers. Other Social Media activities helps get you seen and noticed. Social Media Marketing lets you market your products and services without the extreme cost of other marketing. Also, social media can make sure that your good name isn’t being tarnished. And, if it has been it can be fixed.
Plus, many Static Websites have been around for a very long time. Some search engines consider the website’s age when ranking it in its Search Engine. So, having one of these so called, dying breeds can be a very, very good thing. So, instead of morning its loss celebrate it with adding Social Media to it…. Add a Blog.
Old School Webmasters don’t you dare believe that Blogging & other Social Media is killing the Static Website. Social Media is going to take your Static Website to bigger places… that is if you will let it.
Posted in social media | 14 Comments »
Friday, December 7th, 2007
Tim looks at why becoming a news blogger is hard work and how simple changes to page layouts and designs can attract and promote your news blogs or any site even if he doesn’t use all the tricks himself.
Most bloggers dream of becoming a major source of news and information, millions of visitors and loads of links when you break yet another story. The pace is fast and furious with near daily race to be the first to get the scoop much like traditional media journalism. A vast quantity of front page traffic on Digg and other social sites is from the same websites time and time again but breaking into the exclusive group of true news bloggers is hard work but I hope some of these handy hints will help.
Why do it?
Before we go further you need to stop and take a step back becoming a news blogger is not suitable for all but a minority, go back to those top sites and you will realise nearly all of them are run by a team. With 24 hours in a day a single person can only do so much, and such sites rarely pay for themselves until they reach a certain critical mass. That said the one page tips I’m presenting will help any blogger interested in attracting the social media visitor.
Getting the page ready
How you present your exclusive story will often make or break your site above all you want people to know what the story is as quickly as possible, using stumblers as our basis you have 5.5 seconds to impress or they are gone.
Images
In many ways are the secret weapon of the news blogger and bloggers in general they add something to the story but they are also a useful social media tool.
Primary Image – this is the main image to accompany the article for maximum effect you want to turn this image into a promotional tool, when people photo blog a review on StumbleUpon the chances of a visitor clicking through from the reviews home page is 25% more likely then a standard review. To maximise people using the image as a photo blog picture make sure the image is under 250k and less then 500px width. Include some sort of identifier and don’t be afraid to include words (just make sure you use your alt tags correctly). When it comes to picture nearly all social media users like BBS big bold and simple a slightly risky strategy is to place the primary image just on the fall of the page to force the user to scroll down to see all the image.
Logo Image - A logo image is an image that appears near the top of the post to help categories and give a post a sense of identity, this further helps to cement in the visitors mind what the article is about as well as providing another promotion point. Google news has for a while now been using an algorithm to select suitable images for use within its site for relevant headlines, this sadly may not interest most wannabe news bloggers who don’t make it onto the Google news pages but the use of such images on Digg certainly will. Since the release of the new picture enabled Digg, users when selecting stories have been offered the option of including a picture from the page if and when a suitable image has been found. 
The important thing here is getting the scale right Digg currently is resizing images to 160×120 pixels and is only presenting users with the option of JPG so the ideal logo image should be 160×120 JPG, of course you need to make it interesting enough for the submitter to include it and remember to keep it inoffensive to avoid moderation.
Extract/Summary
Many Stumblers and Diggers simply copy the first few lines of an article when reviewing/submitting so make those lines count. Present an interesting and complete first 2 sentences be it a summary or some sort of opening statement. Just remember to keep it short and sweet otherwise the submitter or the site they are submitting you to will cut it off mid flow.
Typography
I am not a designer but subtle use of modern design concepts such as the use of grids really helps a story along. Don’t let a bad design or typography let your story down because it makes the process to hard to read. One technique borrowed from traditional magazine I find extremely useful is pull out and block quotes. While block quotes have a dedicated tag in html pull quotes do not but there are plenty of Javascript pull quote scripts you can use.
Printing
People still like something tangible so along with good typography a clean way to print the article out is essential at minimum a print.css but also think about promoting printing through a print button.
Social media buttons
Adding pretty icons and badges has been all the rage for a while now even the BBC have got social media badges on some of their pages, but there is no real evidence that this “bookmarking” buttons actually increase the number of people bookmarking sites and can have a very negative effect. On the whole social bookmarking do not cause any ill effects with possibly two exceptions
0 Diggs – Nothing says newbie who can’t fix their template then a Digg button with 0 Diggs, it’s a complete turn off. Social media users tend to flock or hunt in packs a button with a low score can put people off, If you are going to use Digg buttons then only place them on your post at the 20+ mark and make sure you remove them after a few days or immediately after your article is buried no point wasting your users time which could be spent viewing more of your content. You will of course point to the bottom of this page and scream hypocrite what else can I say but bah!
Stumble Me buttons - When StumbleUpon produced a series of buttons people raced of to use them on their blogs without thinking through the consequences. Call it a bug or a protection feature if you like, but Stumble Me buttons are worthless. Every time a user uses your stumble me button to leave a review you lose a potential thumbs up. This is because when you leave a review it does not also thumb up the page as well, so while you might get a couple of hits from peoples home pages on StumbleUpon you will not receive any additional toolbar traffic.
General tips for news blogging
Apart from on page issues some simple things make a large difference in News Blogging
- Work in a team
- Be quick but accurate
- Moderate your comments
- Let others promote you, concentrate on getting the stories
- Don’t be afraid of scrapers always include good full internal links
- Be consistent unlike other forms of blogging news bloggers need to post regularly
Do you have what it takes to be a news blogger, and what type of news blogger are you a
broad sheet or a
tabloid?
Posted in Tips & Tricks, productivity, social media | 7 Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
When I became a Webmaster in 2001 the Web was so different than it is today. Becoming successful was much easier. I started making money fairly quickly. My rules were pretty simple as a Webmaster back then.
- Create a beautiful site,
- keep up with SEO and tweak my site often,
- create fresh content.
But, what wasn’t included in my rules for success back then was personal relationship. And, for me, that is what I found was the biggest change between the original World Wide Web and Web 2.0. Yes, the above is still true. Having a beautiful website that is constantly being optimized and fresh content added often is still extremely important, but it is not enough anymore. Personal Interaction with readers and other Webmasters and Bloggers in your Business Niche is a must.
Times have changed. If I had continued down that Anti-Social path I would have lost everything I had worked so hard to create. With the evolution of the World Wide Web into Web 2.0 came Social Media. Social Media is the way we converse with others over the internet. And, all Webmasters should be adding Social Media to their Business Plan immediately.
Here are some of the ways a Webmaster who is stuck in Web 1.0 can start using Social Media.
Social Media brings back human Relationship to a standard Website. In order to be successful you need to add personal relationship to your business equation. Without adding Social Media I promise you that you will not see the true ability of your site.
Ruud Hein wrote an amazing post, “It’s
the participation economy, stupid!” In his post he points out that attention requires participation. Hein writes,
“If you’re not participating, you willingly give up mindshare and fail to influence.”
There is no room for Anti-Social on the Web today. So, if you are not a “people person” then you need to look inside yourself and figure out if this truly is what you want to do. If it is, move past it. The fact of the matter is that anyone can have a Website or be a Blogger. But, not every Webmaster or Blogger can be a Success.
There is only one Equation for success on the Web today. And, that equation includes Social Media. If you want Online Success there is no room for AntiSocial!!
Posted in social media | 19 Comments »
