Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Are you stuck when it comes to writing status updates,  publishing blog posts or shooting videos for youtube?

Creating good content (useful, valuable content) for social media (blogs, Facebook, twitter, Linked, Youtube) can be a daunting task.

A great exercise to get your content flowing is to identify the common questions that prospects ask about your industry, expertise, products or services.

The call for help came early this morning! “Help! I scheduled my blog articles and they didn’t publish!”
Wordpress is usually a REALLY faithful tool so I immediately logged into the client’s wordpress site to see if I could find the problem.

It appeared that none of the articles were marked as Scheduled. All the problem articles were showing up as Drafts. Of course, that was the problem. But, why did this client think the article was scheduled?

I opened one of the suspect drafts and found that there was a scheduled time and date entered for each draft. But, the articles didn’t get posted because they didn’t make it to the Scheduled Queue.

Like most things, it’s simple once you know the routine. But, if you are new to WordPress, the number of options available can be quite confusing.  Here’s the sequence required to get those scheduled posts out of Draft mode and into the Scheduled Queue:

1. Enter the date and time.
2. Click OK.
3. Click the Schedule button.

The problem: After clicking OK to save the scheduled time, the Save Draft Button was clicked.

Tip: Look carefully at the options in WordPress and in other new media tools when you are ready to publish, post a status update or tweet. What buttons and options are available? Take a minute to explore them.  Determine what the dialogue boxes are REALLY asking you. Since platforms like WordPress, Facebook, LinkedIn (and ______) are constantly changing, your options may not be what they were last time.  Taking 1 minute to really examine the options can save you time and help you utilize new features more quickly.

If you are looking for more structured learning about new media tools like WordPress, Daystar New Media, Inc. offers one-on-one  online training  to help you get up to speed quickly with WordPress and other new media tools.
Contact us at info@daystarnewmedia.com or call 504-210-7690 to learn more.

About the author: Michelle Cullison, President of Daystar New Media, knows how to leverage the power of WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (and more) to strengthen the brand and expand the reach of businesses.  Since 1993, she has helped hundreds of businesses utilize the Web to its fullest business potential. Today, through her speaking, training and consulting services, Michelle equips companies to expand from a website to a web presence by developing and implementing a social media strategy. Connect with Michelle on Linkedin.

These word sets, saving time and social media, don’t often go together. Oh, but they do!!!

Let me tell you how.  You’ve probably heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Perhaps, you’ve subscribed to a couple of blogs using this technology. But, you probably don’t know that this techie tool can save you loads of time.  Many of today’s web-based tools and social media sites support RSS technology, so you can simply post content once and stream it across the social web to multiple sites. Storing content once saves time on updates and reduces storage costs and expands the influence of each communication without expanding the workload.

So, how can businesses benefit from RSS technology? Here’s how: Businesses must keep the communication lines open with both clients and customers. Creating a communication piece (text, audio, video, print, web, etc.) takes a lot of time. Using a communication piece once (email news, single blog post, print letter) is beneficial but using it across multiple networks greatly increase the influence of that one article.   This system can be set up EASILY with a blog and the built in feature, RSS.

Getting started requires that you first have a blog such as the free blogs offered at WordPress.com. This will be the communication hub for your social web presence. The goal is that all content posted on the blog will automatically stream to the social web onto sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

To set up your own automated system, a system that feeds Facebook pages, LinkedIn Personal Profiles, LinkedIn Company profiles and Twitter profiles, do the following:

1.      Identify your blog sites RSS Feed address. If you are using wordpress, it is typically the URL of the website. (Example, my blog is http://socialmediaexplained.com .  Many of the RSS feed apps can use the plain URL, some may require the feed URL that looks something like this: http://www.socialmediaexplained.com/feed/rss/ (In your browser, find the subscribe to feed link or icon and you will find your feed URL.)

2.      To stream your blog posts automatically into your LinkedIn profile, set up the LinkedIn app, BlogLink on your personal profile. (This is found in the apps section of LinkedIn.)

3.      To stream your blog posts into your LinkedIn Company profile, edit the RSS Feed field in your company profile. (You must be the admin of the Company profile.)

4.      To add the feed to your Facebook page, use one of the RSS Facebook apps such as Social RSS, http://apps.facebook.com/social-rss/tabsettings.php.

5.      To add the feed to your Twitter profile, use one of the Twitter apps such as Twitterfeed.com.

6.      RSS feed management also be done with an account on Hootsuite.com. To use this tool, create a hootsuite account and then configure the RSS Feeds settings for each profile: LinkedIn Personal, Facebook Pages and Twitter Profiles. LinkedIn Companies must be configured on LinkedIn.

Please note that the above procedure doesn’t mention every single app available to feed RSS around the web. I’ve just shared with you some of the tools I’ve used on different projects in recent months to get the job done.

The set up I recommended should take approximately 15-30 minutes for 3 profiles. Once the set up is done, your business blog will extend across the web EVERY time you post a new article on it! If you have a staff, you can set up the feed to go into every staff member profile. RSS Feeds can extend your communications and save you time and money. Stay tuned for other ways to save time with social media! And, if you don’t want to do the set up yourself, hire Daystar New Media, Inc. to do it for you.

Michelle Cullison, consultant and professional speaker, equips businesses and organizations to expand from website to web presence to achieve REAL business objectives. Learn more about her company at DaystarNewMedia.com. Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn.com/in/michellecullison or send an email to michelle@daystarnewmedia.com.

If you are a professional service provider and you are unsure of the benefits of blogging, read on.  Professional service providers who blog:

1.       Become a resource for readers…people will follow you!

2.       Create conversation with readers…people get to know you!

3.       Build keyword rich content to drive targeted web traffic…people will find you on the web!

People want to do business with experts they know and trust. Business experts want to connect with a stream of new prospects, convert prospects to clients and grow their business. Blogging provides the environment to meet the needs of both!