Writing a blog is just the first step. Once you’ve got your blog post written the next hurdle is posting it. Sounds easy enough right, well not so fast. In order to make sure the transition is smooth, here are a few things you can do so that you don’t spend a ton of time futsing with the post. First things first you need to write your blog and proofread it.
There are a few more things you need to do to make sure it shows up on the site properly. Ideally you will only post your blog once, for some reason Google doesn’t like it when you continuously edit a piece so if you can do all the editing before you post it that’s best. It’s important to make sure that there are no spelling mistakes, typos or grammatical errors. If you copy and paste it into a Google doc it will flag any of these issues. You can use any spell check you want, that’s just my personal favourite. If you’ve embedded links remove them and add them beside the text you want to embed them. i.e. Fairley Good Designs ➡️link to: www.fairleygooddesigns.com. Adding an icon of some sort will help make sure you don’t miss any when you’re adding them to the site. ***Make sure you test any links that you are adding to the blog to confirm it links to the site you want. Copy and paste the blog to a text editor. This will get rid of any formatting that has been attached by whatever word processor you used to write the blog. ***Apple’s default text editor is TextEdit you should be able to find in your launchpad (in the toolbar at the bottom of the computer screen it’s a silver circle with a rocket ship on it). I’m sure other computers have their own version. Now your blog is ready to post. Depending on what website platform you have will depend on the next steps. Do forget that Google is your friend when it comes to things like this. Search for “How to post a blog on (whatever platform you’re using)” and you should find all the answers you need. If you still need help, give me a shout, I'm happy to help. Happy blogging!
0 Comments
Did you know that Google can't identify images? Not at all! Any images you have online can not be searched for by search engine spiders. Only text can be searched. If you have an image based website, that's a BIG ISSUE! Artists, authors, product sellers... This is where alt-text or alt-tags comes into play. What is alt-text you ask? It means "alternative text" and it used to describe the appearance or function of an image on a page. It can be used to: ✔️be read aloud by screen readers for visually impaired readers ✔️give a description of an image if it fails to load ✔️give bots the ability to index images so they can better understand the content on your site Why would you use alt-tags? ➡️It makes your content more accessible to people who are visually impaired and to people who use descriptive text for other reasons. ➡️If an image fails to load it provides text to describe the image that can not be seen. ➡️It provides context of images to search engine spiders so that can better index your site. How to add alt-text? When you are adding an image to your website (this is also true of social media posts) there will be an option, it's often an "advanced" option, where you can add alt-tags. If you're having trouble finding it I would suggest searching "how to add alt-text, alt-tags to (whatever platform you're using)" What should alt-tags look like? Just describe your image in a way that people would find meaningful. There's not need for "This is a picture of..." For the image I used at the top of this post I used the following alt-text. Brightly stylized camera zoom lens Text: Alt-text. Normally I wouldn't use alt-text here because the blog post doesn't rely on it for understanding.
Social media can be an important part of small or micro businesses marketing strategy. Whether you are working as a social media manager or running the accounts yourself, you want to make sure the amount of time you are spending on social media makes sense. Small businesses don't need to be influencers they need to build a following that will bring customers to their doors. There are 3 things are essential to having a strong presence on social media. Fair warning it can be a bit of a chicken and egg situation when you are first getting started. You need to have strong content that is of interest to your followers, you need to post it regularly AND the thing that many small business don’t do is build a community that you engage with, that will then in turn engage with you. Here’s what you need to do in no specific order… ➡️Build a community that will interact with your page. Follow|Like|Comment|Share the content of like minded pages. ➡️Post content that is of interest to your followers, that they will find interesting & informative and will hopefully engage with. ➡️Share posts regularly. Usually 3 times a week will do it, every other day. Today I'm going to talk about building a community. We all know how important community is in our real lives. These are our family, friends, coworkers and neighbours. It is just as important to build these relationships online as it is in real life. How to build a community on social media Figure out who your community is, don’t worry if you don’t get it quite right at the start, sometimes these things grow organically. Step #1: You need to start following other pages. Think of businesses that you can support that have interest to your clients and/or can help you reach your clients. Sometimes it’s not as obvious as it seems. Professionals (Real Estate Agents, Lawyers, Mortgage brokers…) can often connect with other professionals in their field but with different specialities. Support local businesses, BIAs, not for profits, suppliers... Like minded businesses, colleges, associations & boards... Don't be afraid to follow some accounts that have nothing to do with your business but mean a lot to you personally. It can give your followers an insight into who you are and what's important to you. Step #2: Like, comment and share their posts if it makes sense to you. The highest compliment is to share someone else’s post, commenting is the next best thing and liking a post helps that businesses engagement. Step #3: If someone follows you, see if it’s someone that you can work with by engaging with them. If it is, follow them. Personally I don't love the idea of following everyone that follows you and then unfollowing them soon after. I think it's more important to build authentic relationships. ⭐️Make sure that you acknowledge people that have commented/shared one of your posts. You don’t need to spend a ton of time doing this, I try to take time at least once a week to go through my social media channels and like, comment and share other peoples content. This is especially important to do if you’re scheduling your posts. If you’ve got any questions about this, feel free to get in touch at [email protected] I’d love to chat. Your website is one way people can check out who you are and what you’re about. Sometimes it’s used to verify who you are, find out a little bit more about you and your business. People can be looking for hours of operation, your location or contact info… They may want to see a representation of your body of work... Whatever the reason, if they have trouble finding the information they’re looking for, you could lose them as a potential client. Here’s a list of things you need to check to make sure your website is doing everything it needs to be doing. 1. Quickly go through each page and check all the links. (there’s nothing more frustrating than having to hunt for something that was promised to be one click away).
➡️any email addresses you are supplying for easy contact should be hotlinks. ➡️links to other pages ➡️’read more’ links ➡️links to another page on the site ➡️confirm that backlinks are still functional ➡️don’t forget the header and footer (social media icons, email addresses…) ➡️check ALL your menus and drop down menus ➡️CONTACT page: make sure all the information is linking properly 2. CONFIRM that the actual information is correct. (I can not tell you how many times I contact businesses because I have tried to link to an email address or their social media & the link is wrong or actual address has a typo in it.) ⭐️hours of operation ⭐️menus & special events ⭐️class times 3. Remove any information that is out of date. 😕expired sales 😕extended hours that no longer apply 😕old menus, class schedules… 😕’upcoming’ or current events that have already happened 4. NOW is a great time to update your site. Regularly updating your site helps with your performance on Google. 💰add testimonials as you receive them 💰updating schedules and menus 💰blog posts This may feel like a lot of work but I guarantee it will mean that your website is working as hard as it can to build your business. PRO TIP: If you can, get someone on your team to check it over. Often a fresh set of eyes sees things you don’t. Doing this once every six months should keep your site accurate and up to date. If you need help with a website audit, you know where to find me. TIPS & TRICKS1. Share one post on all channels. I know some people think you should be posting different things on different channels but I honestly don’t think that, that is realistic. 2. Another way to save some time is to create one size of graphic rather than resizing them for each platform. The 1080px & 1080px size works great on all platforms and creating one graphic saves a lot of time. 🚨Sharing Tik Tok videos with captions on Instagram is another story though, but that is for another day. 3. Really want to save time? Do you have a channel or channels that you don’t get much results on but don’t want it look like you’re missing in action? I’ve created a “where you can find me” post and have pinned it to my twitter account. Now when someone visits me on Twitter the first this they see is “I don't spend a ton of time on Twitter, if you'd like to get to know me better you can also find me on Instagram, Facebook...” I haven’t abandoned Twitter completely, at least not yet, but now I’m confident that if someone is searching for me there, they’ll know where to find me on other platforms.
4. Content Batching: Collect several testimonials, quotes, tips & tricks and create a bunch of posts that you can insert over a period of time. 5. Schedule posts in advance. I know, I struggle with this one too. I get busy with clients and then I don’t take the time to post on my own social media channels, never mind writing a blog post. What I do know is that posting on social media regularly is really important to keep you alive in the algorithm. If you're finding keeping up with your online presence difficult, give me a shout. I've got lots of ideas on how to get the biggest bang for your buck. You can reach me at [email protected]. First hour is free! |
AuthourHi, I'm Shirley. This blog is all about providing you with tips & tricks that will help you make your social media platforms, website & newsletters the best that they can be. Archives
December 2022
|