The majority of website users don’t read your content word by word, instead they scan quickly through the page reading a few words and sentences as they go. That means your site visitor will avoid large chunks of text and that may mean they are missing out on the awesome information you are sharing.
Use these four quick tips to make your blog posts more reader friendly and your blog marketing efforts more effective.
Use the four-line rule
It is best to keep your paragraphs brief. A good rule of thumb is a maximum of four to five lines of text. This means breaking your paragraphs up into smaller thoughts that are easier to read on-line. Ideally aim for one thought per paragraph.
Use meaningful subtitles
Break up the flow of the text in your blog post by using meaningful subtitles. Don’t use silly or clever subtitles that don’t have an obvious relationship to the topic. Subtitles allow site visitors to quickly scan through the article and find the parts that most interest them, so make sure they are relevant to the content.
My love affair with WordPress started a couple years ago when I worked on my first WordPress site. I was instantly enamored with the flexibility, functionality and ease of use. The first WordPress website I worked on was a blog, but I could see how a WordPress site could be adapted for almost any website or industry. I was in love… a few years later and I work almost exclusively with WordPress sites.
Let me share with you the reasons I love WordPress.
Flexibility and Functionality
There are so many ways to modify your WordPress site to achieve all sorts of different functionality. There are probably 20,000 different plugins you can add to your site: Add forms, slideshows, galleries, eCommerce, event calendars, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, pop overs, create a members only site and much, much more. Most of the plugins are even free!
If you are active on Twitter you have probably seen hash tags … but are you using them? Hash tags are a keyword or keyword phrase that is preceded by the pound sign. For example, #socialmedia or #tipoftheday. Hash tags are used to organize and share your tweets with other Twitter users. Many users use tools to search hash tags they are interested in and follow these streams. Your objective is to get your tweets in these popular streams.
Hash tags will help others find your posts, so try to use one in every tweet. Of course, it is really important that you only use hash tags that are relevant to your post. Using #britneyspears on your tweet for your new real estate blog post might seem like a great way to get exposure, but this is considered spamming and will annoy Twitter users and hurt your reputation.
Well, it is almost Super Bowl Sunday and many people are just as excited to watch the commercials aired, as they are the actual game. Super Bowl ads are probably outside your marketing budget since, the estimated price for a 30 second spot, that reaches about 11 million viewers, is $3.5 million.
I know the Super Bowl will be on at my house, although being in Canada, we miss out on many of the high budget American ads. So what do we do? We search out the advertisements and end up watching them on the internet.
My favorite commercial from last year is Volkswagen’s The Force.
An email mailing list is an excellent tool for cultivating relationships with potential and existing clients. So you may be asking, how do I grow my mailing list? I have put together 9 real world steps you can take to increase email list subscribers.
1. Offer a freebie.
Give your site visitors a reason to sign up for your mailing list. Simply offer a free resource (eBook, Whitepaper, video tutorial etc.) when they subscribe. Make sure that your freebie is something useful and desirable. You may need to try several offers to find one that works well for your audience.
If possible include a picture of the bonus they will receive. A picture will make the offer appear to have a greater value as the visitor can visualize what they will receive. Continue reading more ways to grow your email list »
So you have set up a Facebook page, Twitter account or have a profile on linkedin… now what? If you are wondering what you should or shouldn’t be posting on your social media accounts, here are some quick tips.
Share Information
Social media isn’t just about entertainment. People are looking for information and sharing how-to’s, did you knows, or other tips or tricks is a great way to share information without resorting to those boring ineffective links to your products and services.
For example as a web designer – rather than posting something like
“Do you need a website redesign?” (With a link to my website services)
maybe I could post
“Is the font on your website too small? Did you know that 85% of website visitors use a screen resolution higher than 1024 x 768.” (With a link to my web site services)
The second post is much more interesting and can stimulate a conversation.
The default size of the text editing box for WordPress posts and pages can be rather small making it difficult to see and edit your text. There are two ways to increase this box; one can be done on the fly and the other changes the default size.
Change the Text box on the fly.
While you are editing your page or post you can simply drag the box and make it bigger. Place your cursor on the bottom right corner and click and drag the box to the desired size. This change is temporary and the box will return to the smaller size next time.
I recently came across a very neat WordPress print plugin, Print Friendly and PDF Button. It is easy to use and install and lets your visitor choose between printing the document or creating a PDF file. The site visitor can also choose to delete blocks of text or hide images, ensuring they are getting the information they want. The site user interface is top notch and very professional looking.
I found the installation very easy as it is a plugin in the WordPress directory so you can search and install right from your dashboard. The configuration of the settings was straight forward and easy to. I really liked the flexibility of configuration: Read More »
You were updating WordPress or your plugins and now your website is stuck in maintenance mode – and you are getting a message that says, “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”
What do you do?
The default permalink setting for WordPress creates ugly URLs for your pages and posts. Not only are these default URLs ugly but they are not very search engine friendly. They do nothing to help improve your search engine ranking.
URLs from the default setting look something like this:
http://www.your-domain-name.com/?p=123
What we want is something like this:
http://www.your-domain-name.com/small-business/5-marketing-tips/
Notice how the URL is keyword rich for a site promoting marketing tips for small businesses? URLs like this are more user-friendly and will help your website perform better in searches.
The structure of this permalink is domain-name/blog-category/post-name. This way if you ensure your categories and blog titles are search engine friendly, you will end up with very effective URLs for your wordpress website. Read More »
