Category: Blogs

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Why You May Want to Consider Using Tumblr

Screen shot of my Tumblr page.
Follow me as “Just Nancy” on Tumblr.

When I drive a long distance with my high school senior kids in the car, it gives me time to ask what is trending and is hot with their friends. I’ve found that what happens with their generation is a very good indicator as to where businesses should be looking to build for the future. Temper that with a review with my older kid who is 25 and I get a great viewpoint of how businesses should be embracing certain new technologies and avoiding other ones that may be becoming passé.

In my most recent drive Tumblr came up several times with my kids, so I checked it out. You can view my own Tumblr page here at http://nancymccord.tumblr.com/. I call mine “Just Nancy” as it is a place for now for me to share just about anything.

This is what I have found using Tumblr and why you may want to consider using it.

1. It is actually incredibly simple to set up and actually fun to use.

2. It has a very nice smartphone integration that allows you to post photos, quick quotes, and just about anything on the go.

3. The desktop interface is cool, user-intuitive, and the smartphone app simple.

4. I love the ability to add multi-media and text simply.

5. It feels like there will be a more visual and different demographic on this platform and so may be a more energized platform than a blog for a business.

6. From my own initial testing to me this seems like this may be the place where you can merge all your online enterprises into one cohesive message.

It remains to be seen how I will use Tumblr for business, but for now, I am having plenty of fun checking it out.

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Building Links With Dead Strategies

We create customer-winning content.
We create customer-winning content.

Creating articles that were informational in nature with links back to your website in a bio and placing these on news sites, article directories, and ezine sites for use by other webmasters on their blogs and in their websites in a way to build incoming links is just another previously good tactic that Google has disavowed.

Unfortunately, there are many business owners who are still using this tactic and are encouraged to embrace this tactic by SEO firms. It is very important to know that using this type of tactic today may actually work against you.

Make sure to watch this video on this topic from Matt Cutts the lead web spam engineer from Google and the voice to my industry. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo75Og4M34Q

Now using this tactic to build inbound links may actually drop your organic placement. Guest blogging is also another high profile tactic that has also fallen under Google’s eyes and has also been disavowed as a usable tactic to improve organic search placement.

With Google focusing on high quality unique content, that is not overly keyword dense, and has high user relevancy as tested through click through rate, time on page, and personal search history it is nearly impossible to scam your way to the top of the organic results.

A much better approach for placement today is to focus on improving the user experience on your website, refining the message, and promoting your site to generate traffic on social media and Google AdWords. There will always be sites that are placed in the top ten slots on Google but getting there now is no longer an art form but rather creating the very best user experience that is the most relevant to a unique search query.

For help in creating user-centric content and blog posts please make sure to review our service offerings.

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Our Increasing Visual World Forces Blogs to Upgrade

The Selfie Generation is Losing the Ability to Concentrate on Content.
The Selfie Generation is Losing the Ability to Concentrate on Content.

It used to be that content was king on the Web; have a great blog or terrific content on your website and that was enough. Search engines loved it and so did customers. Now with devices galore, short reader attention spans, and readers in the Instagram and selfie generation, blogs and website have to cater to a full bodied rich media experience.

Gone are the days of blogs without images.

Gone are the days when only a few businesses did video.

Gone are the days when content all alone was enough.

Now we need…

● Images on every blog post and some have gone crazy by making the image huge it fills the entire computer screen.

● Do a Facebook update, wow, better make sure there’s a good image on the page so Facebook will grab it as a thumbnail as we all know that readers won’t even look at an update that is not visually interesting.

● Doing a Twitter update, yikes, did you add a Twitter pic link?

● Got a new product. Better whip out your smartphone and do a quick YouTube video of you demonstrating it and upload it and then link it to your website.

Although in some cases images really add nicely to content, it almost seems like the pendulum is swinging too far. Pretty soon websites will look like toddler chunky reading books with images and only a few words of content.

Although a picture may be worth 1,000 words, we still really NEED words in our online content to convey a full thoughtful and persuasive message.

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Should You Follow Copyblogger and Elminate Blog Comments?

Let people connect where they want!
Let people connect where they want, on your blog!

Copyblogger, a very high profile and active blogsite, recently decided to stop allowing comments on its blog. Although the owner of Copyblogger tried to turn back the tide of negative pushback citing it was a simple business decision, several online pundits have challenged the purpose of this action.

Here’s what I think about allowing or not allowing blog comments.

1. Yes, it is each business owner’s decision to allow or not allow blog comments on their own blog. But…

2. Some of the best exchanges on high profile blogs are actually found in the comment section as other pros in the industry weigh in. In many cases I have followed links, researched additional products mentioned in a comment, and in some cases even expounded on a post and comments on my own blog.

3. If you only want to have a conversation about the blog on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter, where your real tactic is to drive links to boost up your blog, it seems weird to me to then have valuable content and just point to it, driving traffic away from your blog. Keep the conversation where the content is. Don’t say “read our blog, but if you want to comment on it go to our Facebook or Google+ page.”

4. Blogging is about commenting and soliciting comments. Although I will not chose to not visit a site that does not have blog comments enabled, many times I do read a post and scroll to see what others say to weigh the validity of the information I just read in a blog post.

5. I allow comments on my own blog and recommend that client do so as well, but encourage pre-approval of comments and a periodic review of what to publish. Not all comments on my blog are published as I will net out spam and self-promoting comment posts.

Click our comment link and let me know what you think, do you allow comments on your own blog?