But with limited time being utilized for 1000 different things, how can somebody write a blog post, much less a great blog post?

Well the trick is simpler than you think! Are we talking about hiring somebody to ghost write? Absolutely not. Ghost writers don’t share the same passion as you do about your business. Writing something on your own is something that can give you immense satisfaction and it can also be a good way for you to identify weaknesses of your business and marketing approach.

OK let’s get down to business. The ideal length of a blog post is about 400-500 words. If you are wondering, this post is already 180 words long. One thing that can help you with blog post writing is writing about something you are passionate about. Take me for example. I specialize in Search Engine Optimization and whatever I write about it comes to me naturally.

Don’t try to write about really complex matters in a blog post. A blog is hardly the best place for something like that. If you have a great subject topic, break it down to manageable bits. You’ll find it easy to write, you are going to find more topics to write about and your audience will love you for an easy to read and easy to remember post.

Try to make your blog posts interesting and to the point. It is always a good idea to try to engage your audience in the first paragraph and build your case from that point on. If you know anything about the inverted pyramid model of news reporting, I’m talking about that.

Also, use a couple of images that you might find for free. Try flickr.com or photos.com. You can find images that you can use for free after giving the owners proper credit for their images.

Another important thing you can do is linking back to your older posts. This works for you in several ways.

1. You give value to blog posts that you’ve written already and get an opportunity to re-index them.
2. Gives you an opportunity to direct viewers to your old posts that could be related in subject matter and beneficial to the reader.
3. Those content thieves will be pushed hard to steal your content with their content scrapers.

So these are a few things that you can try when you are confronted with writing something for your blog. The best blog posts that I’ve written came off within 60-90 minutes like this one which has taken me about 66 minutes now.  So get cracking and share your experiences with the world (me included).

Image Courtesy – PhotoSteve101

Not considering any SEO implications, page speed is an extremely important web usability element. Consider the following example originally published on Master New Media .

• Screen 1 – The first test participant in the top gaze plot fixated a few times within the big empty color block before the content downloaded, then spent the remaining time looking at the rest of the page. This user never looked at the big promotional space after it had rendered.
• Screen 2- The second user (bottom gaze plot) happened to be looking away from the screen during the eight seconds when the promotional content downloaded. Thus, the first time he looked at the page he saw it as intended, complete with the entire promo.

The slideshow occupies 23% of the page and the user who had to endure the download delay spent only 1% of her total viewing time within this space.

In contrast, the user who in effect received instantaneous page rendering (because he didn’t look until it was done), spent 20% of his viewing time within the slideshow area.

So in essence if the page speed has been optimized, the marketing team would have seen some more traction with their well planned advertisement. But in this case, all that effort was spent in vain.

The most important thing to keep in mind when it comes to website speed is “let the audience be in control”. Remember, it’s the audience who interact with the website and it’s them that matters to you or your client. Every second of delay in website speed is a negative impact on the audience and lead them to realize that they are no longer in control. In such case, you or your clients are going to lose credibility which is not helpful at all.

So it might be a good idea to start looking at page speed. There are many free tools to check speed. We use a Firefox plugin called ‘Yslow’. Google is going one step ahead and offering a Page Speed tool for free http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

Check out this video from the Google dev team.

Twitter’s simplicity should not be underestimated, the real power is in harnessing ones followers. Hypothetically speaking, if Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) were to retweet one of your tweets about your product to his 6.5 million followers, chances are they in turn would retweet the same to their followers. Before you know it a tweet can go viral and be noticed by millions. If a company were to try to reach an audience say of 6 million TV viewers, they’d have to spend some real money. Twitter is free. Unlike many other social media, Twitter is always on the go, things are constantly changing by the second.

The good news is that it is easily accessible. It’s supported by almost all the smart phones and almost any internet device, so keeping your followers up-to-date is easy.

In some cases, Tweeps, as the Twitter users are known, tend to think out loud through their tweets. In fact there are many well documented instances where brands, famous people, journalists, sports personalities among others found themselves saying things that they shouldn’t be saying in the first place. Therefore it is a good idea to read up on twitter etiquette and establish a companywide protocol for tweeting.

So how can a small company find its way in this tweet-maze? It’s not difficult to start, start with meaningful tweets about your industry. No one is going to care if you just picked up Starbucks for the day, so keep the personal stuff away. First it would help to have a good idea what Twitter is and how to use its many unique features. For example, Twitter hash tags and lists are two of the most important weapons in a good tweep’s armory.

Let’s say that your company rents out party equipment. You could tweet about a new line of Gazebos that just came in and tag the tweet with a #gazebo hashtag. So let’s say a user in Miami is searching Twitter for a Gazebo rental in Miami. The tweet could be something like this: “Nice #party by the Virginia Key Beach #Miami under a nice blazing red #gazebo by www.sample.com”. The hashtag gives the user an opportunity to tap into more interesting tweet streams.

Start off by following people in your industry. Always try to keep the Followers and Following ratio close to each other. It is sometimes suspect if someone is following 5000 people but only has 2 followers. Keep posting meaningful content and you’ll see your follower count rising on its own. Share things about your area of expertise; answer general questions on your field; follow hash tags which have a good focused following; (This however does not necessarily include the trending topics!) and be a good tweep in general.

There are a few tools you can use to increase your presence in the Twittersphere. Start with the Twitter business section. It can give you really nice pointers on what you can do on Twitter to promote your business effectively on Twitter. Read this case study on moxsie available on twitter business section.

Take some time off to think through your twitter strategy. It can help you a lot with taking your brand to the next level of online visibility.

Google updates its indexing and ranking algorithm quite regularly. In fact, they release about 400 new updates typically every year. Most of them are minor tweaks, but once in a while they release updates that are really huge like the Panda update they rolled out recently (early March 2011).
According to Matt Cutts, the head of the Google Web Spam team, the Panda update is in fact an algorithm update geared at taking down low quality content made specifically to rank well for important keywords. Such pages are often monetized using various advertising platforms getting the publishers millions of dollars in revenues in some cases.

With the Panda update, Google believes that it can deliver better search results for searchers and improve their search experience which had come under fire in various instances for not being consistent. For a long time, Google rankings were good for the first page for a given search query; hence the drive for ranking well in the first page of Google results.

So with the Panda update, Google is trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in a bid to improve their search quality. With low quality content given less value in their search index, Google believes that it can provide better web page results.

The Panda update is a blessing for websites that host valuable content for humans, not robots. Most of the sites that are affected are content farms or sites which contain scraped content from all over the web. With the initial roll out of the Panda update in the US, content networks such as Mahalo, Ezine articles and Wisegeek found themselves in hot water with ranking changes from -70% to -94% in some instances.
At the same time, websites with good user generated content have seen their rankings improve. So what’s the bottom line with the Google Panda update?

Well, if you have good content that is not specifically targeted at search engines, you are probably ok. To make sure, check out your Google Analytics to see whether there has been a dip in traffic from US visitors (as the Panda update is currently for US search results, but soon to be rolled out internationally). If so, you might be a victim of the Panda. Even Google has admitted that their new algorithm is not without faults and if you think that your site is a genuine victim, head over to Google Webmasters Tools and submit a reconsideration request.
If you think that there might be a problem with your website, correct any issues and send a reconsideration request and always remember that SEO is all about improving the value of your site for your visitors, not for search engines.

Photo credits JL08

SEO for businesses today must consist of much more than using the latest design trends. Designers should also be designing sites that take the full range of people viewing the site into consideration. The largest and most successful companies know that they have to offer different versions of their web content so as to appeal to everyone who accesses their websites.

If a company fails to present its online information in ways that are suitable for all types of cultural audiences, it is sure to miss out on potential customers who cannot relate to how the information is being presented. Take a quick look at the McDonald’s U.S. website and then at the site for Indian customers and you will notice very stark differences in how the information is presented. The Indian site is heavy on color and is much more interactive. The U.S. site on the other hand is more minimalistic and straightforward in nature. This illustrates how web design for businesses should be approached – by understanding how people from different cultures prefer to have their information presented.

It is absolutely essential to the success of your business that you focus on the website user experience for so that your visitors, no matter where they are located, have a successful visit. Studies have shown us that if a visitor to your site has a successful visit, he/she is three times more likely to recommend your site than if they find the visit unpleasant. Successful websites are often customized or localized for foreign markets, taking the local language into account, social standards and aesthetic preferences. Localizing a website is a rather complicated chore but it is necessary. Making versions of a site for different cultures shows consumers that your organization is willing to accommodate their needs. When a user sees a version of a website in his or her language, even if they are proficient in English, results in that user having a very favorable experience.

Users from around the world have special needs related to entry fields on websites for names and addresses, dates and measurements and information about regional product standards. Considering all of the issues related to international usability, it is recommended that international usability testing with users is done. This testing can be done from wherever you are located as you could make telephone calls to users to ask them to think aloud as they navigate the site, assuming of course that you can locate these foreign users who speak your language well enough to complete a telephone interview.

The internet is called the world wide web for a reason and more and more web design professionals are realizing that the emphasis today must be placed on the first two words: World Wide. If you want to truly go global and succeed with your website, resist going with those web designers that offer those too-good-to-be-true web design deals and instead work with a team of experts who understand the importance of website globalization optimization and how to implement it.

• Where to obtain small business financing

• What a small business needs to qualify for financing

• How to easily and affordable remain connected with existing customers

• Where to find new customers and how to communicate with them regularly

During this session small businesses will receive live case studies from business owners who obtained financing and are successfully marketing their businesses through multiple-channels including email marketing, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and direct mail.

Speakers include small business marketing expert Lisa Sparks, Director of the SCORE’s South Palm Beach Chapter Hal Finkelstein and Certified Business Analyst Phil Scruton of the SBDC at Palm Beach State College.

When Friday, April 30, 2010, 8:30am – 12pm

Where Boca Raton Marriott
5150 Town Center Circle
Boca Raton, FL 33486

First Damian Montero will present “How to Make Your Website iPad Friendly,” showing how to leverage HTML5 in order to play videos and more on the portable device.

The second presentation is by Luciano Ibias, COO of Zila Networks, the company behind the successful Friends Around Me, who will talk about “iPad App in a Week: How To Port Your App From iPhone To iPad.”

Follow the April speakers on Twitter:
Damian Montero @damianmontero
Luciano Ibias @ibias

Please RSVP Via Facebook
iPad Crash Course

Date: Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Grove Spot
3324 Virginia Street
Miami, FL 33133

Time: 7.30 PM

This month’s presentation will be on remote automated testing: How to do it, what the benefits are, popular tools etc. This is going to be a great tool for anyone who works freelance or designs websites on their own. Testing can be an invaluable method for inspection into your sites usability. To do this, there will also be a demo of the Loop11 software, a great product for remote automated testing. The Loop11 competition will be launched while the meet-up and the details of the prize worth $1750 will be revealed as well!

Where

Panera Bread
1762 North Federal Hwy
Ft. Lauderdale FL 33305
954-567-5925

When

Thursday, April 29, 2010 7:00 PM

If you are considering hiring a web design company to assist you in setting up your space on the internet, you should consider hiring a local web designer. There are so many design companies today to choose from and they are located all over the world. While it is fine to use a design company located far from you, it could become a problem if a face-to-face meeting is necessary in order to go over some fine details concerning your website design.

You can benefit in many ways by going local with your web designer. Maybe you would like your designer to walk through your company in order to get a good, overall picture of what you do. Perhaps some drawings on paper are necessary so that you can understand fully what the designer has in mind for your site. In both cases, having your designer located on the other side of the world are of no benefit. Just having some regular, short meetings at a local coffee shop together with your designer can help to clear things up that may otherwise take a lot of emails and phone calls to clarify.

If you need a website built for your local business, it is nearly impossible for an outsider to fully understand the nature of the people living in your area. If you hire a local web designer however, he or she will understand how your potential customers think and feel. Adding a bit of local flavor to your site’s design is always a great idea and certainly an outsider will never be able to do that as well as someone who lives near you.

Hiring a local web designer is also a great way to support the economy in your area. Communities everywhere are trying to reduce the number of jobs that are sourced out as   outsourcing can eventually lead to both social and economic collapse.  Instead of contributing to this detrimental effect, you will be helping other business people in your city or town.

Finally, if and when your website runs into problems, your web designer will simply give you a call and perhaps invite you to his/her office so that you can sit down together and hammer out a solution. On the other hand, if your designer is located far away from you  in another time zone for instance, they may stop working on your site all together until they can reach you – which will delay the launching of your site.

A good resource for hiring local talent is www.craigslist.org. Another good resource is to simply search in Google for a local designer.

Once you have decided what type of website you wish to build, then you must choose the best resources to use. This will save you a lot of frustration when building your site and it is not even all that necessary that you understand HTML in order to build an effective site.

Web Templates

A template is a complete website layout without the text and links. Templates give you a layout and format from which you can create your web pages. Templates have many uses. They allow you to create a website without needing to know any website design as the layout is done for you. Templates also help you to launch your site quickly as you need only to add the text and then load your site to the web. You can either buy templates or get them for free and they come in a wide variety of styles and colors. Once you download the template you like, in most cases they’re ready for deployment. Your pages will load quickly and your site visitors will have a nice browser experience.

Content Pages

Providing great content will make your site a place that visitors will want to come back to again and again and a ‘sticky’ site is a successful site. The easiest way to make your site sticky is to provide helpful articles. Be sure that the articles you put on your content pages are keyword rich, informative, relevant and useful to your visitors.

HTML Editors

If you do not know how to write HTML there are many free editors available that will do the job for you. Choosing the right editor will determine how quickly your site will get online. The best HTML editors will allow you to quickly and easily add content to your pages. Depending on the editor you pick, it will make your life easy when adding graphics, icons, photos and background images to your website – in most cases it can be drag and drop.

Content Management Systems

A content management system (CMS) allows you to make changes to your content without having to hire a programmer. You can edit, delete, modify and remove any content you want even if you have no HTML knowledge or skills. A CMS offers consistency to all of your web pages. If you have a content-rich site and you need to update and edit that information on a regular basis then consider a content management system (CMS) to help ease the process of adding new content.

Blogs

[This bit is important! -->] The easiest way to publish content on the web is through a blog. Blogger and WordPress are two of the most user-friendly blogging platforms out there today that allow you to quickly input your text and then publish it. Blogs are search engine friendly, so if you want to spread your information across the web, a blog is a good way to do that. Blogs are indexed often and quickly by the search engines so if you have your website connected to your blog, you should enjoy a good deal of traffic. Be sure when blogging to make good use of keywords so the search engine crawlers or spiders will pick them up for indexing.

Using the right resources when building a website makes your site contemporary and users will benefit by receiving something of value which will help to contribute to the continuous growth of your site. Your website will become attractive when you use the correct tools and it will display as it should in the different browsers used by your visitors, resulting in them being happy to visit your site again.